While we often blame the weekly petrol bill for tipping our budget into the red, there is another, less publicly vilified cost eating a substantial hole into our back pockets bottled water.
The NSW town of Bundanoon put itself on the map recently when the community announced it is doing away with bottled water a world first. While there are reports that the ban will cost local shopkeepers money in lost sales, the 2500 residents of Bundanoon will also save themselves up to $2.5million a year by not buying bottled water.
An analysis of the cost of bottled water conducted by Clean Up Australia found the average cost of bottled water is $2.78 a litre almost double the average cost of a litre of petrol. It means that by using tap water instead of bottled water each person can save themselves up to $1000 a year. In the end the town is not only making a significant positive impact on our environment, but they're also going to be better off financially.
Bundanoon's move is a sign of things to come. As people tire of government inaction on key environmental issues, communities are going to start taking matters into their own hands. We've already seen towns such as Coles Bay in Tasmania and Jervis Bay in NSW introduce their own ban on plastic bags, and even South Australia after watching the Federal Government fail to make inroads on a national ban on the bag introduced their own state-wide ban in May.
Grassroot moves to take action are a sign of just how out of touch the Federal Government is on key environmental issues. The public can see the damaging impact our habits are having on the environment and yet the Government continues to stall on the issues and they are issues that simply can't afford to be stalled.
First, there are the manufacturing costs. Australia uses more than 300,000 barrels of oil a year to make PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles for bottled water and the manufacture of every tonne of PET produces about three tonnes of carbon dioxide. For every litre of water in plastic bottles, another 2lt of water is used in the production process. Then there's the fact that Australians buy about 118,000 tonnes of plastic drink bottles a year but only recycle 35 per cent of them. The 76,700 tonnes left behind either goes to landfill or ends up in our environment as rubbish.
There are the obvious costs of transporting the bottles all across the globe, not to mention the possible adverse affect on groundwater levels if more water is being taken out than is naturally replenished.
Australians' thirst for bottled water is driving a dramatic rise in plastic rubbish and is adding to greenhouse gas pollution, but as Bundanoon has proven, that doesn't have to be the case. The town has already influenced the NSW Government to take action towards the banning of bottled water in all government departments and agencies.
While those in the Federal Government continue to twiddle their thumbs on our key environmental issues, what we really need is for more Australian communities, households and individuals to take the stand and ban bottled water in their own lives.
For a saving of $1000 a year, we'd be crazy not to.
Ian Kiernan is chairman of Clean Up Australia.
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