Community & Labour Action

Canmore will likely soon eliminate bottled water sales at the Rec Centre: Canmore Leader

Canmore will likely soon eliminate bottled water sales at the Rec Centre
Posted By Hamish MacLean/hamish@canmoreleader.com

It will likely one day be difficult to get a bottle of water at the Canmore Recreation Centre.

The town of Canmore has decided to pursue the elimination of the sale of bottled water from the Rec Centre.

Chris Hay, manager of recreation and facility services, said the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is encouraging cities and towns across Canada to at least reduce and eventually eliminate the sale of bottled water in municipalities.

Bottled water is however, Hay said, a big seller at the Rec Centre. And the town is only now at the stage of beginning discussions with the two contractors that supply bottled water to the Rec Centre on implementing the change.

“Municipal tap water is of excellent quality . . . and it’s offered for free, from fountains, within our facility,” Hay said. Hay has discussed a potential transition towards the elimination of the sale of bottled water with town managers and the town’s sustainability committee.

“That goes from a ‘resource’ conversation to an ‘environmental impact’ conversation — if we have free water available, we can then look at the resources it takes to offer essentially tap water from out of a bottle,” Hay said, “and the resources it takes to both package (bottles of water) to process the water, to deliver the water and all of that.”

A program to reduce the use of bottled water, he said, fits in with the Town of Canmore’s direction to act in a more sustainable fashion.

There is no target date set for the end of bottled water sales in town facilities, Hay said. Conversations and negotiations will need to take place with the contractors, he said.

“It is a decision that the town of Canmore will make, or is going to make, it’s just a question of implementation.”

“Inside the Bottle: The people’s campaign on the bottled water industry” (insidethebottle.org), or the group behind the website, proposed, on March 22, 2009, World Water Day, a toast to public water: a pledge to drink public water rather than buying bottled water.

The website says that 1.1 billion people around the world do not have access to clean water. It says many First Nations communities across Canada can’t access safe drinking water and that Canadian water fountains are being decommissioned and are not being replaced.

It also notes that we are in the decade the United Nations has called for international action on water (2005-2015).

According to FCM’s website the municipalities of Nelson, B.C., Burnaby, B.C. London, Ont., St. Catharines, Ont. Toronto, Ont., Blue Mountains, Ont., Sault Ste Marie, Ont., Altona, Man., and Charlottetown, P.E.I. have all made moves to reduce the use of plastic bottled water in town.