TITLE
Recommendation that the City Council request City Manager work with the Long Beach Water Department to add language to its bottled water labels promoting the use of tap by residents and businesses and develop a means for including biodegradable bags to collect bottles for recycling.
DISCUSSION
In June, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, conducted the National City Water Taste Test to recognize the quality and taste of municipal water systems. Long Beach was one of the five finalists.
The Conference of Mayors also passed a resolution acknowledging that United States' municipal water systems are among the finest in the world, providing high quality, safe and affordable drinking water to our citizens and urged a study of the impact of bottled water on municipal waste.
At present, municipalities invest approximately $43 billion a year for pure drinking water and treating wastewater. However, U.S. consumers spend more than $11 billion a year on bottled water. Bottled water costs more than an equivalent volume of gasoline, equivalent to 1,000 to 10,000 times more than tap water.
Another advantage of tap water is that it contains fluoride. Fluoride combats tooth decay in two ways. It strengthens tooth enamel, a hard and shiny substance that protects the teeth, so that it can better resist the acid formed by plaque. Fluoride also allows teeth damaged by acid to repair, or remineralize themselves. Fluoride cannot repair cavities, but it can reverse low levels of tooth decay and thus prevent new cavities from forming. It is especially critical to the health of developing teeth in children. And, despite all the good news about dental health, tooth decay remains one of the most common diseases of childhood.
The other major issue raised about bottled water is the use of plastic bottles, which are derived from crude oil, (polyethylene terephthalate (PET)). In the U.S. the plastic bottles produced for water require 1.5 million barrels of oil per year, enough to generate...
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