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Tourists in Venice urged to drink the water
Collecting the trash in Venice is no easy feat. After all, it's not like a garbage truck can just drive down the street - there aren't any. Garbage is collected by workers with wheelbarrows and then loaded onto barges and costs about $335 million per ton to remove (compared to $84 million per ton on the mainland of Italy).
In an effort to reduce these costs, the Venetian government is asking locals and tourists to drink water from the tap instead of buying plastic bottles. The city's tap water meets the highest purity standards, but many people are still buying bottled water from stores and in restaurants. To help promote the tap water, officials have started calling it "Acqua Veritas" and selling glass bottles labeled as such. The hope is that the fancy bottles will encourage people people to drink from the tap, reducing trash and the cost to remove it from the island.
With tourists outnumbering locals 100 to 1, visitors to Venice may have the greatest impact on the trash situation. So when in Venice, forgo the plastic and drink from the tap instead.
Filed under: Food and Drink, Europe, Italy, News
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
u07ch Sep 29th 2009 2:13PM
At $335 million per ton are they offering this to tender ?
Bryce Sep 29th 2009 7:14PM
Trash hauling is serious bidness in Italy. A ton of Gold is only like $31 million...
csxdave Sep 29th 2009 10:02PM
Thats $167,500 per pound of trash. I just rolled out $6.7 million on the street.
nzm Sep 30th 2009 10:48AM
Why aren't they giving the glass Acqua Veritas bottled water away for free? Why would they expect anyone to pay for tap water instead of the other bottled water brands? At the prices of the garbage removal, this would surely work out cheaper, and be the best way to reduce the plastic waste volumes and encourage people to stop buying bottled water.
At the least, they could have a refundable €1-2 charge on the bottles that would be returned when the bottles are given back. It wouldn't be difficult to set up - Europe already has machines which refund money on returned bottles.