Drink up

ITALY: People in Italy drink more bottled water than anywhere else in the world — and that’s a big problem for the historic city of Venice. Plastic water bottles floating on the canals and lying on the streets have led to a campaign to persuade Venetians to drink tap water.

“Tap water doesn’t require a bottle,” city official Riccardo Seccarello told The New York Times. “Its quality is controlled more strictly than bottled water. It’s really cheap. And you don’t have to walk to a market to get it.”

"Tap water is really cheap, and you don't have to walk to a market to get it," says Riccardo Seccarello.

Because no vehicles are permitted in the city, all refuse in Venice must be collected on foot. Doing this costs about €240 a ton in Venice, compared to about €60 a ton for mainland Italy, Seccarello says.

To encourage people to use tap water, the city calls it by the brand name Acqua Veritas and provides carafes free of charge to residents. Restaurants and shops, however, have been slow to accept the idea, since they make money selling bottled water. And because the publicity is in Italian, most tourists are unaware of it.

Italians drink more than 150 litres of bottled water a year, according to the market research firm Zenith International. After Italy, the top western European consumers of bottled water are Germany, France, Spain and Britain.