You can kiss that Perrier goodbye... someday

Restaurants, schools tap into local water supplies

You've heard of eating locally, but the latest fad may be drinking locally. Some restaurants and schools are starting to serve filtered tap water instead of bottled water, citing the eco-impacts of packaging and shipping a product that's already available right thar in the kitchen. But it seems that pushing pints of Perrier is such a moneymaker that only some restaurants, mostly snooty ones, can afford to quit; cutting-edgers include Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and Mario Batali's Del Posto in New York. "Serving tap water is a great idea that we'd all love to be able to do, but it's not going to happen all at once," says one Manhattan restaurateur. Rockin' lunch lady Ann Cooper led Berkeley's schools to make the switch, and experts say it just makes sense. "The rationale for buying bottled water is a fantasy that has a destructive downside," says Gina Solomon of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "These companies are marketing an illusion of environmental purity."

source: The New York Times, Marian Burros, 30 May 2007 via Grist Environmental News and Commentary

Pretty amazing, actually: i'm sure many of my readers remember when a glass of cold tapwater was standard at any restaurant from Woolworth's to Manhattan's best prix fixe. Now, "we'd all love to be able to do [it], but it's not going to happen all at once"! And as far as i know, the water hasn't changed much.

In fact I get pretty angry about this. One restauranteur praised Alice Waters, but said “I think she gets carried away sometimes”. Why? He wondered where he would make up the lost revenue if he eliminated bottled water.

Geoffrey Zakarian, the chef and an owner of Country in Manhattan, described the ban as “a worthy thing to do.” But he added, “You have to make a profit.”

Tom Colicchio, the chef and an owner of Craft restaurant and several spinoffs, was incredulous that restaurants would contemplate such a change. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said. “Why would you do that — not from a money standpoint, but from a service and hospitality standpoint? Fifty to 60 percent prefer bottled water, especially sparkling.”

In fact, “We have been marketed to the point that [school-] children believe they can’t drink water out of the tap.” Yet "there is no reason to believe that bottled water is safer than tap water". (NYTimes)

And i read a while back that every day americans throw out enough plastic water bottles to fill Yankee Stadium!