Unbottle It! January 13, 2009

There is a growing movement to ban the sale of bottled water in municipalities and institutions like school boards and university campuses. The cities of Toronto, London, Owen Sound, and many other Ontario communities, have banned the sale of bottled water in municipal facilities. So have school boards in Ottawa and Waterloo.

Building on this momentum, the Council of Canadians and CUPE Ontario are hosting an educational tour in January 2009, to encourage more municipalities and other institutions to take practical action to “Unbottle It!,” and tap into clean, safe, public water. Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians’ Chairperson and Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN General Assembly, and Sid Ryan, CUPE Ontario President, will be touring 15 Ontario communities to raise awareness about this important issue and encourage people into action.

Canada has one of the best drinking water systems in the world, but the bottled water industry has worked hard to undermine our faith in public water. The industry sells water – what should be a shared public resource – for huge profits. Producing and transporting bottled water requires large amounts of fossil fuels, and plastic water bottles continue to end up by the millions in local landfills.

The London date includes additional speaker Slobodan P. Simonovic, Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Western Ontario.

Official Website: http://canadians.org/water/issues/Unbottle_It/ontariotour.html