In the hot and noble city of Venice, discarded water bottles float by gondolas on the edges of the canals and spill out of trash cans on the majestic Piazza San Marco. Because Venice has no roads, trash must be collected on foot at enormous expense. And while plastic bottles can in principle be recycled, the process still unleashes greenhouse gases.
Italians are the leading consumers of bottled water in the world, drinking more than 150 liters per person annually. But as their environmental consciousness deepens, officials are avidly promoting what was previously unthinkable: that Italians should drink tap water.
For decades bottled water has been the norm on European tables, although tap water in many, if not most, cities is suitable for drinking. Since the 1980s, the bottled water habit has also taken hold in the US, prompting cities from New York to San Francisco to wage public education campaigns to encourage the use of tap water to reduce plastic waste.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
But in Venice, officials took a leaf from the advertising playbook that has helped make bottled water a multibillion-dollar global industry. They invented a lofty brand name for Venice’s tap water — Acqua Veritas — created a sleek logo and emblazoned it on stylish carafes that were distributed free to households.
Because tap water is often jokingly called “the mayor’s water” in Italy, they even enlisted regional politicians to star in fancy tongue-in-cheek billboards.
“I, too, drink the mayor’s water,” proclaims Venice’s mayor, a bearded philosopher named Massimo Cacciari, as he pours a glass.
“There are so many advantages to Acqua Veritas,” said Riccardo Seccarello, a city official, whose office is adorned by an Acqua Veritas poster into which US President Barack Obama’s picture has been Photoshopped. “Tap water doesn’t require a bottle. Its quality is controlled more strictly than bottled water. It’s really cheap. And you don’t have to walk to a market to get it.”
He also leaked a little information that city officials have made sure everyone now knows: Venice’s tap water comes from deep underground in the same region as one of Italy’s most popular bottled waters, San Benedetto.
Bottled water is a booming global industry with hundreds of brands that are advertised for their trendy appeal as well as their professed health benefits, from aiding digestion to smoothing aging skin.
Forty-five billion liters of water were sold in 16 Western European countries in 2007, according to Zenith International, a market research firm, with Italy followed by Germany, France, Spain and Britain as market leaders. In the US, per capita consumption of bottled water more than doubled between 1997 and 2007, to 110 liters per capita, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
The growth of the industry has been a bete noire for environmentalists, who lament the amount of fossil fuel energy used to bottle water and, often, to ship it long distances. Then there is also the impact of the enormous amount of plastic waste produced by the habit. Recycling is a plus but has logistical limits and generates some emissions anyway as bottles are transported and reprocessed.
Trash is an especially costly problem in Venice, in any case, because it is collected by men with wheelbarrows along the canals. Collection costs US$335 per tonne compared with US$84 per tonne on the mainland, Seccarello said.
Three years ago Venice created Veritas, a municipal umbrella company that is responsible both for city water and for trash collection. Officials of the new company realized that by promoting the former, they could reduce the latter.
In terms of trash reduction, the Acqua Veritas campaign has already been a success, Venetian officials calculate, reducing the amount of plastic trash over all to 261 tonnes a month now from 288 tonnes a year ago.
“I’ve discovered tap water — I actually like the taste better,” said Silvia Vatta, 25, a student who was buying fish at a stall near the Accademia Bridge. “We used to use bottled water because we grew up with it at home and didn’t know any better.”
Still, the campaign to promote the mayor’s water has made little headway with restaurants and stores, which make money selling bottled water. And in a city where tourists outnumber permanent residents 100 to 1, public education for locals can go only so far in reducing plastic waste.
Nonetheless, Seccarello has a message for bottle-toting tourists: in Venice, as in Rome, public spouts are scattered about the city and the water is “perfectly safe.”
Many people still prefer to filter tap water because it can contain mineral sediment. Acqua Veritas advises people to let it sit for a few minutes if there is a residual whiff of chlorine, which is used in the system to ensure hygiene.
Giancarlo Demuru, 70, walking with a cane and dressed all in white, said that 20 years ago he used bottled water even to make tea, because Venice’s water then tasted slightly salty. But it has improved with better water management, he said.
In light of the Acqua Veritas campaign, he now uses bottled water only when guests want fizzy water.
But the city now has an answer for that, too: It is offering good discounts on carbonators.
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