Reducing Carbon Emissions - why street lights, but not bottled water?

Written by Cllr Zoe Patrick and published in Oxford Mail on Mon 11th Aug 2008

Many people will have seen that Oxfordshire County Council has announced plans to switch off some street lights in the name of cutting down on the county's carbon emissions and with a potential saving of £7,835 per year.

However, a Liberal Democrat motion to use tap water instead of bottled water for council and committee meetings at County Hall was not supported by the Conservatives in April. It has been reported that, in terms of production, bottled water can generate up to 600 times more CO2 than the same amount of tap water. Transport of bottled water alone in the UK is estimated to produce 33,200 tonnes of CO2 in emissions.

Peter Ainsworth, the Tory Shadow Secretary for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has been quoted as saying "It is obvious there are big environmental issues around bottled water". The annual cost of bottled water to Bath and North East Somerset Council - a Tory authority which recently agreed to stop using bottled water - has been reported as £17,433 in 2007.

It is a pity that the Tory administration at County Hall is at odds with the environmental and cost messages from elsewhere and such a very simple, but effective measure was not supported.