Bottled water insanity

7.15.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 10th Sep 2007

Bottoms up! Robin Lawrence and Claire Darke refresh themselves with a glass of tap water.

Councillor Robin Lawrence and Claire Darke have attacked Britain's £2 billion thirst for bottled water as environmental insanity. More than two billion litres of bottled water fly off shop shelves every year and sales are growing at nearly 9 per cent a year. But in July the Drinking Water Inspectorate's report on water in the Midlands said that 99.8% of tap water samples passed their tests. Other tests reveal that there is no known health advantage to be gained from drinking bottled water instead of tap water.

Robin said "Transporting water in bottles involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels and thus emitting greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere. This contrasts starkly with tap water which is distributed through an energy efficient infrastructure of pipes.

Claire said "Only about 10 per cent of the millions of bottles are recycled. They are made from a plastic formed out of crude oil extracts and most bottles end up in landfill sites where they take 450 years to break down."