San Francisco Official to Propose Water-Bottle Ban

SAN FRANCISCOH₂0 is one of the most natural substances on earth. But there are an increasing number of initiatives to reduce the waste from bottled water.

Look no farther than the environmentally-friendly West Coast, where the president of San Francisco's board of supervisors, David Chiu, plans to introduce legislation that would prohibit the sale of individual water bottles on city property.

Every 27 hours Americans consume enough bottled water to circle the entire equator with plastic bottles stacked end to end," Chiu said in a statement March 27. "We have to do better."

Chiu's proposal would prohibit sales of bottled water at several venues if potable sources of water are available for human consumption. Sporting facilities, sporting events and races would be exempt from the restrictions for health and safety reasons, according to a news release from Corporate Accountability International, a Boston-based watchdog group.

A number of national parks including Grand Canyon and Zion have bans on bottled-water sales, and support for such measures continues to grow. For instance, Mount Rainier has disclosed it will install water-bottle filling stations and sell low-cost reusable bottles, according to Corporate Accountability International.

"Eliminating the sale of disposable water bottles and asking our visitors to instead use reuseable bottles and water stations in the park has helped the park reduce its environmental footprint, while still providing our visitors with access to water," said Darla Sidles, Superintendent for Saguaro National Park in southern Arizona, in a statement. "National Parks should lead the way and serve as a role model for environmental sustainability. We are proud to be bottled-water free, and to set a good example for other national parks and businesses."

Not everyone is in favor of restricting bottled water in the national parks. Coca-Cola Co., the producer of the Dasani bottled water and donor to the National Park Foundation, reportedly raised concerns about a ban at the Grand Canyon. In a Nov. 9, 2011, article published in The New York Times, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Refreshments USA, Susan Stribling, said the company preferred to address the problem of plastic litter by increasing the availability of recycling programs.

"Banning anything is never the right answer," Stribling told the Times. "If you do that, you don't necessarily address the problem."

But Grand Canyon National Park last year eliminated the sale of water packaged in individual disposable containers. Water related to disposable bottles comprised an estimated 20% of the park's overall waste stream and 30% of its recyclables.

Jack Whitworth, Superintendent of Zion National Park in southern Utah, characterized Zion's 2008 ban as a "win-win."

"It was the right step for the environment eliminating up to 60,000 disposable plastic bottles per year formerly sold in Zion from the waste stream and sending a clear message that water, like our parks, is an essential public resource to protect for today and future generations," he said in a statement.