So I read a headline in a food law journal about an Australian town banning the sale of bottled water and thought to myself that the world had finally flipped... the Aussies turning into a nanny state? The world is surely on its head!
Ok there's the environmental considerations, huge resources are used in sourcing, bottling and transporting bottled water to sell in countries where the water from the taps is perfectly healthy. Plus there's the headache of disposing of all those bottles. They are able to be recycled but it's not an easy process, so probably most of them end up as normal landfill.
Still I thought to myself that these factors were not enough to get an entire town up in arms, seeing as it's not a new problem. One of my local towns, a very hippy place, has banned shops from giving out plastic bags, some shops follow the spirit and don't offer them, others just charge for them, like M & S now do - less benevolence, more jumping on the bandwagon to make extra money in my opinion.
So what of the backwater Aussie town of Bundanoon? Why are they at the forefront of green radicalism?
Well it would seem that although the lesson has been learnt that you can't sell ice to eskimos or coal in Newcastle (although Maggie Thatcher sorted that one out) the corporate machine is still just as stupid. The bottled water company announced its intentions to source its water from the spring under the town and then to sell it back to them, understandably they were a little insensed by this suggestion and it pushed them over the edge into environmental militancy on a town-wide scale. Only one lonely voter dissented on the decision. Of course, in the capitalist spirit the tradespeople of the town have not missed an opportunity, they will sell reusable bottles bearing the slogan "Bundy on Tap", which residents and visitors can use to fill up from the town fountains.
One in the eye for corporate greed.
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