“BUNDY on Tap” co-ordinator Huw Kingston has defended Bundanoon’s decision to become Australia’s first bottled still water free town, following a backlash from the national bottled water industry, some consumers and even other Southern Highlands water campaigners.
Bundanoon hit the headlines around the world last week when more than 350 residents voted in favour of Bundanoon businesses’ decision to remove commercially bottled still water from their shelves from September.
Residents and visitors will instead be encouraged to fill re-usable “Bundy On Tap” containers with filtered tap water from businesses or from bubblers to be installed in the main street.
The move caught the attention of world media, from the New York Times to Arabic news agency Aljazeera, and was the second-most widely read news item on the BBC website, prompting a flood of comments to the Bundanoon community website.
Mr Kingston said he had received hundreds of “massively positive” emails from Siberia to the Bahamas and everywhere in between, including an offer from a Swiss company to donate 500 of the refillable “Bundy on Tap” bottles.
Eighty one percent of respondents to a Southern Highlands News poll backed Bundanoon’s move. Of nearly 4000 who responded to a Sydney Morning Herald poll showed 74 per cent were in favour.
Federal Environment Peter Garrett, a former Southern Highlands resident, has called on state governments to consider following the example of NSW Premier Nathan Rees, who last week announced that bottled water would be banned from government departments.
Bundanoon Rural Fire Service members will back “Bundy on Tap” by using their standard-issue refillable water bottles instead of carrying commercially bottled water.
But Bundanoon’s move has brought criticism from bottled water fans and from Southern Highlands water companies and their employees.
Australasian Bottled Water Institute’s (ABWI) chief executive officer, Geoff Parker, who attended Wednesday’s meeting, fired the first shots in defence of Australia’s $500 million bottled water industry.
“The environmental footprint of one bottle of locally produced water would be much smaller than a tin of canned tomatoes imported from overseas, some imported cheese, French champagne and any other imported item,” Mr Parker said.
Robertson naturalist Denis Wilson, who campaigned against State Government plans to pump water for Sydney from the Kangaloon aquifer, weighed into the argument through his blog, suggesting Bundanoon had made a “private deal” with the bottled water industry to sell sparkling mineral water in glass bottles to Bundanoon.
Mr Kingston dismissed Mr Wilson’s claim as “absolutely bizarre”.
“There is no deal,” Mr Kingston said.
“Absolutely not.
“The idea that this is a big scam to pull the wool over the eyes of the people of Bundanoon and that we’ll all start filling up with fizzy water is laughable,” he said.
Mr Kingston said critics has misrepresented Bundanoon’s campaign as an effort to stop people from drinking water, forcing people to turn to fizzy drinks or fruit juices.
Far from banning water, “Bundy on Tap” was making it more freely available by ensuring that residents and visitors had access to free water instead of having to buy it, he said.
Mr Kingston said critics who have asked why Bundanoon had not moved to ban Coca Cola or even whisky were missing the point of the campaign, which encourages consumers to stop paying for a product they can get for nothing.
“Coca Cola and whisky do not come out of a tap,” he said.
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