Bottled water costs thousands of times that of tap water and is worse for the environment and in 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom banned the use of city funds to pay for bottled water. But according to an October 23, 2010, New York Times / Bay Citizen article, "[t]he city's 11 current supervisors and their staff members have guzzled $4,387 worth of bottled water since the prohibition went into effect more than three years ago, public records show."
Tell the Board of Supervisors to walk the talk and ditch the bottle.
According to the New York Times / Bay Citizen article published on October 23, 2010, "[t]he city%u2019s 11 current supervisors and their staff members have guzzled $4,387 worth of bottled water since the prohibition went into effect more than three years ago, public records show."
In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom determined that spending public funds on bottled water was outrageous for a city that owns Hetch Hetchy, a pristine reservoir in the Sierra Nevada that is said to produce some of the country's best-tasting tap water. So the mayor declared a ban on spending city funds to purchase bottled water.
The San Francisco Department of the Environment Director Jared Blumenfeld and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal wrote in the Chronicle: "Just supplying Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, enough to take 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, according to the Container Recycling Institute. In contrast, San Francisco tap water is distributed through an existing zero-carbon infrastructure: plumbing and gravity. Our water generates clean energy on its way to our tap -- powering our streetcars, fire stations, the airport and schools. More than 1 billion plastic water bottles end up in the California's trash each year, taking up valuable landfill space, leaking toxic additives, such as phthalates, into the groundwater and taking 1,000 years to biodegrade."
In spite of the ban and an effort to convert city offices to water dispensers or straight tap water, only three of the 11 supervisors have stopped using bottled water (one additional supervisor has pledged to do so). Please join President of the Board David Chiu and Supervisors John Avalos, Ross Mirkarimi and Eric Mar in supporting San Francisco's tap water and canceling your bottled water delivery contracts.
