NEWTOWN: With its long history of bold statements and commitment to sustainability, Newtown Festival decided to make its 2012 event “bottled water free”. Rather than promoting bottled water sales – a relatively newly normalised phenomenon in Australia – organisers decided to challenge the estimated 90,000 festival goers to boycott bottled water, bring their own refill bottles and drink tap water.
In doing so, Newtown Festival has joined the growing number of organisations and city authorities, including Manly Council, Los Angeles and San Francisco, who have banned bottled water sales and service at events. Sydney Water provided two water stations at the festival, which were hooked up directly to tap water onsite to dispense water free of charge. This sustainable drinking option for thirsty festival-goers proved extremely popular: by 2pm, Sydney Water staff had already filled 12,000 refill bottles, as well as 7,500 paper cups for those who forgot to bring their own bottle.
In addition to sparing festival-goers the considerable expense of buying bottled water, the stations saved 5,200 litres of water that would have gone into producing plastic water bottles and avoided around 34kg of plastic waste that would have ended up in landfill. But tap water’s sustainability credentials do not end with these savings.
Tap water requires no packaging and shipping. Bottled water, on the other hand, makes a considerable negative impact on the environment. In Australia in 2009-2010, around 52.5 million litres of oil were used to create 15,254 tonnes of PET water bottles and each tonne of PET manufactured creates around 3 tonnes of CO2. Notably, this is before the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of transporting and refrigerating bottled water are taken into account.
“Bottled water is a silly marketing invention and an environmental disaster,” said Jeff Angel, supporter of the initiative and Executive Director of the Total Environment Centre. “More and more communities and events are recognising the significant waste created by bottled water and working to prevent it.” Andrew Foran, CEO of the Centre for Sustainability Leadership also lauded the festival’s bottled water free policy as a great example of leadership in action.
The festival’s statement is about choosing sustainable practices and exercising influence over the world we live in through the choices we make. But it is also about recognising the privilege Australians enjoy of high quality drinking water on tap – a privilege billions of people around the world go without.
“We’ve been thrilled by the overwhelming positivity and encouraging messages of support from our local community and regular festival-goes,” said Newtown Festival’s Cathy Wills. “So we know that they’re committed to being bottled water free too.”
