Industry Fights Eco-Sin Tax on Bottled Water

Water Smarts

Today: Drink water from the tap, instead of buying single-use bottled water, which requires much more energy to produce, store and transport. Barely 20% of those plastic bottles end up getting recycled, and most are made out of petroleum. Use filters if you are concerned about your local water supply.

Tomorrow: Buy a reusable bottle to take with you on the go, so you can always refill it from a tap and avoid buying bottled water. Stainless steel is a good choice, because you don't have to worry about the potentially toxic chemicals that can leech out of many plastics over time.

Photo: Carol Gering / istock

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State, federal and international industry groups are suing Chicago in an effort to block its new 5-cent tax on each bottle of water, the Chicago Tribune reports today. The eco-sin tax, and the broad international outcry it has engendered, could become familiar, as public sentiment turns against bottled water.

Chicago is the first major U.S. city to tax bottled water, according to the Chicago Tribune, but it isn't likely to be the last. Other cities have banned or limited the sales of bottled water, but if there's a way to capitalize on fashionable resentment of the waste embodied by the ubiquitous water bottle, you can bet more will opt for the Chicago solution.

Sin taxes are familiar, when it comes to the likes of alcohol and cigarettes, which cost individual's health and society health care expenses. Water doesn't fit that mold, except for that bottle it's packaged in. In a country that produces the cleanest water to the tap in the world, packaging, shipping and consuming water in tiny plastic bottles is an environmental sin.

Click here for more on the proposed tax, or the Seven Sins of Bottled Water.

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