Venice Sinking Under 13 Million Plastic Bottles Per Year
Posted by By Editor at 3 November, at 16 : 55 PM Print
20 million tourists leave 13 million plastic bottles in Venice every year.
Much of this could be prevented by informing tourists that quality drinking water is available from 122 public water fountains and by clear labelling and publicity.
Other tourist destinations like Paris and Florence have already taken action by providing public fountains dispensing chilled and sparkling water.
Click here to go directly to our petition or read the full article below.
The problem with bottled water
Bottled water is a worldwide environmental problem. The plastic water bottles consume large amounts of oil in their manufacture, may leach chemicals into the water they contain, and do not biodegrade for hundreds of years. If you reuse them they leach even more chemicals into any water or other liquid you put into them.
Bottled water may simply be filtered tap water, or of inferior quality to tap water. The bottles are ‘disposed of’ in increasingly scarce landfill sites, or simply clog up the sea, breaking into smaller and more dangerous particles but still not biodegrading. Some 85% are never recycled. Last year scientists confirmed that there are millions of tons of plastic floating around the Pacific Ocean in an area known as the North Pacific Gyre, a slow moving vortex. Four major currents have carried millions of tons of rubbish into the remote area, with the mostly plastic refuse now covering an area estimated to be larger than Texas. Moreover, water is heavy and the transportation of bottled water is an energy intensive activity.
- Venice’s 122 Public Fountains are Unmarked
122 public fountains but…..
Tourists tend to be suspicious of tap water and the public water fountains in Venice are unmarked, and appear old and corroded. In fact, tap water in Italy is strictly controlled and Venetian water comes from the same sources as some bottled waters.
As well as massive environmental impact, the disposal of all those plastic bottles is a huge cost to the local economy. Waste disposal costs around $335 per ton compared with $84 per ton on the mainland.
How other areas in Italy have solved this problem
And yet there is much that can be done to change this. The Italian region of Cinque Terre is an area of World Heritage coast, which lies south of Genoa in the province of Liguria. Some 3 million tourists visit the area every year discarding two million plastic bottles, some of which tumble down the cliffs and end up littering local beaches and polluting the sea.
Under a new initiative, tourists entering the national park which encloses the region will be encouraged to buy one litre reusable flasks, stamped with the park’s logo. Automated water fountains offering chilled, fizzy and still water will be installed in the coming months so they can replenish their water supply as they hike the nine mile long coastline.
The president of the Cinque Terre national park said the ban was being introduced because the area was being “buried” in plastic. “With so many visitors, the footpaths and villages of the Cinque Terre are at risk of being transformed into a great big open air dustbin. We are going to update the existing water fountains and install new ones: they will provide people with still or sparkling filtrated water. By the start of next Spring, we hope to have liberated ourselves from this nightmare,” said Mr Bonanini. “If the Cinque Terre is reduced to a rubbish dump in five years’ time, they will suffer the consequences. This is a sacrifice that will benefit shopkeepers and everyone else. To the three million tourists who come here every year, we ask them for a little bit of understanding, in order to save this paradise for the future.”
Florence has taken action
In Florence too, action has been taken but mainly for residents rather than the millions of tourists that descend on the city each year. “Fontanelli” have been installed around the city that dispense cooled water and at one even sparkling water. In 2009, 6 million litres of water were distributed from these fountains in and around Florence, saving families over a million Euros in cost, and avoiding 15.000 kilograms of plastic, or 1.5 million bottles, from being introduced into the environment. These water fountains all lie outside the Florence ring road, hence their limited impact on tourists. But it’s still a great step in the right direction. Chilledsparkling and still water fountians have recently been introduced in Paris too.
Attempts in Venice
Three years ago Venice created Veritas, a municipal umbrella company that is responsible both for city water and for rubbish collection in the region. Officials of the new company realized that by promoting the former, they could reduce the latter and rubbish collection costs. A campaign in Italian run by the last Mayor was aimed at the 60,000 inhabitants. Venetian officials claim some success for the scheme with the amount of plastic refuse down to 261 tons a month now from 288 tons a year ago. But the real impact will only happen when the campaign is rolled out to tourists in languages other than Italian. Shopkeepers may not like it losing sales of bottled water but they can be rewarded through a generous cut of sales of a recyclable flask.
The principle problems in Venice are:
•No publicity about the public water fountains in any language
•Absolutely no labelling on the fountains saying ‘drinking water’
•Water fountains that are old and corroded, do not appear attractive and are therefore hardly used
•Fountains that run continuously creating waste and adding to the impression that this is not quality drinking water
The Time for Tap Campaign says let’s stop this crazy environmental destruction now.
Our clear pragmatic objectives can easily be implemented in stages:
• A publicity campaign aimed at tourists i.e in English and other common languages alerting them to the public water fountains, their location and the fact they dispense excellent quality drinking water
•The provision of more public fountains
•The replacement of old fountains, with ones that dispense water with valve operation
•The provision of recyclable flasks as in the Cinque Terre initiative
•To work towards a ban on the use of plastic bottles on the all the Venice islands
To join the Fight for Tap fill in the form below. We are also collecting names outside the Venice railway station. Our petition will be presented to the Mayor of Venice.
We are aiming to collect 10,000 ‘signatures’ (e mails) to present to the Mayor.
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Join the Venice Time for Tap Campaign « Italexpat's Blog, 1 year ago
[...] • To work towards a ban on the use of plastic bottles on the all the Venice islands To join the Time for Tap Campaign click here [...]
Tweets that mention Venice Sinking Under 13 Million Plastic Bottles Per Year -- Topsy.com, 1 year ago
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The Internet Millionaire System Blog » Blog Archive » Money flowing? T in any public fountain in S? D-Florida, 1 year ago
[...] Venice Sinking Under thirteen Million Plastic Bottles Per Year [...]
study abroad scholarship, 1 year ago
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
information technology, 1 year ago
Thanks for some quality points there. I am kind of new to online , so I printed this off to put in my file, any better way to go about keeping track of it then printing?
Editor, 1 year ago
Hi,
On the site you can always search by topic or simply go to ‘our campaigns’ where all the material is indexed and archived by month. Interestingly, an article in the Miami Herald talks about starting to clean up the Pacific Gyre next year but this is a bit like clearing up oil spill without capping the well! The more we can do to raise awareness that using something once that hangs around for hiundreds of years is a crazy way to behave the better!
VeniceInfoSite Team
Editor, 1 year ago
This is the reference to the Miami Herald article
dental assistant, 1 year ago
My cousin recommended this blog and she was totally right keep up the fantastic work!
Phlebotomy Certification, 1 year ago
Finally, an issue that I am passionate about. I have looked for information of this caliber for the last several hours. Your site is greatly appreciated.
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Editor, 1 year ago
Hi, we use a WordPress theme by Tempatic, News Theme, which is generally pretty user-friendly and there plenty of plug ins available. However, even using a good theme like this, you need a good IT project co ordinator implementer and we use Charlie Evatt charlie@evatt.co.uk to do all the clever technical stuff and we highly recommend his services.
InfoSite Team
megaupload search engine, 1 year ago
So helpful and so useful post . Thanks for such informative post. Good job.
Denise, 1 year ago
Would also love to see the industry I work in begin reducing and reusing the plastic bottles it uses for haircolor, permanent waving and other chemical services! Way to go Venice!!!
rachat de credit, 1 year ago
Il semble que vous soyez un expert dans ce domaine, vos remarques sont tres interessantes, merci.
- Daniel
Catherine Farrell, 1 year ago
Hi, I am visiting Venice in April this year. Is there a list of addresses where I can find the water fountains in Venice?
Editor, 1 year ago
Hi, in theory a list is available from the Venice Tourist Information points, but they often run out……
monogram blanket, 1 year ago
You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found your blog.
Venice Sinking Under 13 Million Plastic Bottles Per Year « Save The Ocean, 1 year ago
[...] Join the campaign to ban plastic bottled water in Venice. from → Plastics ← Saving the ocean, one island at a time: Greg Stone on TED.com LikeBe the first to like this post. No comments yet [...]
Katie Marsen, 1 year ago
Hi,
Am currently creating a list of plastic petitions to post as a list on the internet, to promote petition signing with interested parties and ensure that the many diverse and important grassroots petitions are successful.
I would like to include your petition on this list, could you let me have the following information:
1. Open to citizens of which countries?
2. Petition to be sent to?
3. No of signatures aiming for/currently have
4. Closing Date
If you know of any other plastic related petitions, would love to hear of them.
Many thanks for your help,
Katie Marsen
ktsalinger@googlemail.com