Government 'should serve tap water at meetings' » Environment » 24dash.com

All Government departments should serve tap water instead of bottled water at meetings, a campaign group said today.

Sustain called for the change in order to cut down on waste plastic bottles and transport emissions.

The food and farming alliance carried out a snapshot survey of water use by different Government departments and agencies.

It found only two departments and one agency routinely served tap water at meetings.

The Cabinet Office, the House of Commons, the Treasury, the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills all served bottled water at meetings.

Sustain praised the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for recently changing its policy in favour of tap water.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Transport (DfT) also served tap water at meetings.

Sustain said another five bodies couldn't be contacted or didn't reply.

Its findings were based on telephone interviews with catering spokesmen from each department which were carried out before Christmas.

In addition, Sustain today released a report into drinking water consumption which says the UK bought 2 billion litres of bottled water in 2005.

The 'Have you bottled it? How drinking tap water can help save you and the planet' report says the majority of used plastic water bottles are either incinerated or buried in landfill sites.

Transport used to get bottled water into stores generates CO2 emissions which harm the environment, the report says.

A Sustain spokesman praised the FSA, Defra and the DfT for serving tap water at meetings.

"We'd like to see the rest of Government follow their lead - after all, British mains water continues to be very high quality and great value," he added.

From this month the FSA is serving tap water at meetings in its London HQ and has an on-site facility to carbonate the water.

The FSA's director of corporate resources Pat Stewart said: "We want to cut down on waste, reduce energy and transport costs and promote recycling, as well as reducing our costs too."

Copyright Press Association 2007.