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Day 9 July, 2009

Australian town bans bottled water sales

Someone’s cot­toned onto the fact that they’re being conned:

[The town of] Bundanoon’s battle against the bottle has been brew­ing for years, ever since a Sydney-based bever­age com­pany announced plans to build a water extrac­tion plant in the town. Res­id­ents were furi­ous over the pro­spect of an out­sider tak­ing their water, truck­ing it up to Sydney for pro­cessing and then selling it back to them. The town is still fight­ing the company’s pro­posal in court.

Then in March, Huw King­ston, who owns the town’s com­bin­a­tion cafe and bike shop, had a thought: If the town was so against host­ing a water bot­tling com­pany, why not ban the end product?

On Wed­nes­day, 356 people turned up for a vote — the biggest turnout ever at a town meeting.

Only two people voted no. One said he was wor­ried ban­ning bottled water would encour­age people to drink sug­ary drinks. The other was Geoff Parker, dir­ector of the Aus­tralasian Bottled Water Insti­tute — which rep­res­ents the bottled water industry.