Chicago is taxing bottled water. Will L.A.?

Wow! So Chicago is actually putting a tax on bottled water! Every plastic bottle of water will cost an extra 5 cents in the Windy City, starting in the new year. (via thedailygreen)

If you've been keeping up with Bring Your Own week, you already know that beyond posing an enviro problem, bottled water is not actually safer for you than tap water, and the plastic bottle encasing water could itself pose health risks.

Not everyone's ready to stop throwing away money, though. The Chicago Tribune quotes a somewhat deluded woman who thinks that bottled water is part of a "health regimen." Um, you know drinking tap water will, amazingly, do that crazy thing water is generally known to do: hydrate.

People determined to remain suckers say they will buy bottled water from outside Chicago and worry that others will turn to soft drinks to quench their thirst. For my part, I hope L.A. will pass a similar tax.

Photo by Jay Wilson via Flickr

Comments

[m]

What happens to the money collected with the CRV charge that people pay when buying bottled beverages, but don't redeem in California? From the small bit of research I did, I can't find an equivalent charge in Illinois, so I am not sure how much a 5 cent increase (equivalent to our CRV value, plus our CRV is taxed in some situations) would really hurt sales. Are sales of bottled water significantly less in California than in other states because of our CRV? Just because people recycle doesn't mean they actually get the CRV back either.

[Siel]

That unclaimed money "is used to pay for recycling-related education and grants and subsidies to local governments and conservation groups," to quote a recent LAT article. With CRV though, there's no differentiation between what's in the bottle (a bottle of wine makes sense, while a bottle of water does not, considering you can get it out of the tap without the unnecessary plastic) -- meaning that if sales in Cali are hurt by the CRV thing, it'd be hurt for pretty much all beverages, not bottled water specifically as in Chicago.

[m]

With all of the initiatives to use more ethanol though, I wonder how long it will be before soda (sweetened with high fructose corn syrup) will increase in price as well....I know the soda machines and vending machine contents at my work already went up in price due to this....

[Jenn]

Amazing-- on my walk to the subway this morning I was wondering why there hasn't been a "bottle-bill" implemented for water bottles. I passed a man rummaging through the trash of a large apartment building, trying to find the returnables, and it struck me how absolutely effective the bottle-bill is at ramping up recycling. If this very same tax strategy were implemented on bottled water, it would at least help us get out from under the mountain of plastic water bottles we're burying ourselves under, and perhaps create a bigger market for that recycled plastic. It just confounds me why the easier changes such as this take such a LONG time to make it through the government. It's a no-brainer, you know?