Concord, Massachusetts to be First U.S. Town to Ban Bottled Water

from TreeHugger.com
by Jerry James Stone, San Francisco, CA

Last week residents of Concord, Massachusetts voted to ban the sale of all bottled water by next January, making it the first U.S. town to take such action.

The effort was lead by Jean Hill, an 82-year old activist, who lobbied neighbours and officials alike on the consequences of plastic bottles filling landfills and polluting local waters.

"All these discarded bottles are damaging our planet, causing clumps of garbage in the oceans that hurt fish, and are creating more pollution on our streets,'' says Hill. "This is a great achievement to be the first in the country to do this. This is about addressing an injustice.''

Of course, the $10 billion industry is less than thrilled with the news and has even threatened a legal challenge. They argue that singling out bottled water is unfair when "thousands of food, medicinal, beauty and cleaning products packaged in plastic." But this isn't the first time bottled water has been targeted.

More than 100 towns across the United States already prohibit spending city dollars on the product... Read the full story on TreeHugger.com