Tappin-it in Venice

Venice: known for its canals, its art, it's romance, and its.... plastic bottles piling up at the side of the beautiful canals. Europe, and especially Italy, is known for its great love of bottled water - you can hardly go to a restaurant without getting one on your table. Which is part of why when the government decided to encourage a national switch to tap water (cleverly called 'Aqua Veritas') even the New York Times noticed. The un-precedented switch to tap water instead of bottled water isn't just about having clean streets - er, canals. It's also about saving money. It costs a lot of money to clean up the mess, and recycling is neither cheap nor all that climate-friendly. tap water is much cheaper for everyone - and more sustainable. And certainly is a better example of sustainable development.

Venice isn't trying to shame the major water-privatizing/bottling businesses out there. It is learning from them - the chique name, the new labels, the massive public outreach campaign - it all makes a difference.

And they are not alone. Increasingly, provinces in Canada are outlawing plastic water bottles at work. In a country where over 1/3 of households prefer bottled to tap water, and only 50% of the bottles are recycled, its and expensive public habit that public officials are aiming to stop. And tap water - especially in a place like Canada - is safer than bottled water, both because of the greater regulation on tap water and the lack of Bisphenal A,a a chemical that can seep into water from plastic bottles.

One has to wonder what the larger impact of this will be - not just in the North, but also in the developing world, which is quickly uptaking bottled water. According to Worldwatch Institute, in 2007 the United States was the largest consumer of bottled water, but India had increased its consumption of bottled water by threefold and China had doubled its consumption between 2000 and 2005. It isn't just an expensive and environmentally unclean practice, the production process can de-stabilize fragile,draught- prone ecosystem - which Coke,via Disani, has done in communities from India to Georgia.

Will those-who-can-afford-bottled water in developing countries learn from cities like Venice, and take a different route than the plastic-bottle-addiction? Will companies such as Disani, in the long run, be effected by these kinds of civil initiatives? We will see.