Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Drink Local
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Hooray! This is likely to get me in trouble at home, but what an excellent idea. Years ago I tried to help can the "fresh ground pepper" cliche by refusing it at every restaurant I attended. It didn't work. Maybe I can take the same magic and help kick the "what type of water would you like?" scam at many restaurants.

DON’T bother asking for Fiji, San Pellegrino or any other designer water at either Incanto, a restaurant that opened in San Francisco in 2002, or at Poggio, which opened in Sausalito, Calif., two years later.
All their water comes out of the tap. It’s filtered before it reaches the table, but it’s from the public water system, just the same.

“Serving our local water in reusable carafes makes more sense for the environment than manufacturing thousands of single-use glass bottles for someone to use once and throw away,” Incanto explains at its Web site.

These two Bay Area restaurants were pretty much alone in kicking the bottle habit until Alice Waters, the godmother of things organic, sustainable and local, banned bottled still water at Chez Panisse in Berkeley last year and started serving only house-made sparkling water this year. Then the press took notice. Now other California restaurants, like Nopa in San Francisco, are following suit. Even an ice cream shop — Ici, in Berkeley — has jumped on the non-bottled-water wagon.

And now, with a little push from Ms. Waters, an important New York City restaurant is coming on board.

It’s a big move in the restaurant industry, which, if you extrapolate from the amount of water it buys, takes in at least $200 million to $350 million from bottled water a year, according to the restaurant consultant Clark Wolf.

The “eat local” movement first became popular in California, so it makes sense that “drink local” is catching on there as a way to reduce the environmental costs of manufacturing and transporting bottles of water, as well as the mountains of plastic that end up in landfills.

Read the whole article. It's excellent, including quotes from a school district that banned bottle water: When they first did it, everyone was up in arms. A year later no one complained. And an advocacy group that calculated the amount of fuel necessary to bring a boat load of water from France: An equivalent of 700 cars a year on the road. Even if you calculate in hyperbole, well done! And then this:

Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental advocacy group, said there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water, though there can be problems with either. The public water supply is much more stringently regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency than bottled water is by the Food and Drug Administration. The E.P.A. requires multiple daily tests for bacteria, for example, with the results available to the public; the F.D.A. requires weekly testing, which does not have to be reported to the agency, to the states or to the public.

“The rationale for buying bottled water is a fantasy that has a destructive downside,” Dr. Solomon said. “These companies are marketing an illusion of environmental purity.”

Labels: Food

Posted by B Feiler at 6:25 AM
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