District of Squamish council's support of banning bottled water in municipal buildings appears to have ruffled feathers at a bottled water manufacturing company in Ontario.
Nestle Waters Canada president John Zupo is so upset by council's support of the proposed bottle water ban he has requested to meet with Mayor Greg Gardner and his staff personally.
"The possibility of a ban is troubling to our employees, customers and business partners who live and conduct commerce in your community," wrote Zupo from Guelph, Ont.
Gardner said there are no plans to hold such a meeting because it is not a decision at that level.
"No other complaints have come in other than this one from a company that's in the business of selling bottled water."
Last week, Nestle director of corporate affairs John Challinor II also sent The Chief a strongly-worded letter for publication questioning council's dedication to democracy.
Challinor stated he felt a decision of this magnitude should be put to the public and deferred until after a public hearing.
"That is how healthy local democracies work in Canada," said Challinor.
He also attached an April 2009 Health Canada Report about bottled water, which he said contradicted several comments made be Squamish Environmental technician Brooke Carere during her presentation to council on Sept. 14, one he called "mythology one typically finds on anti-bottled water activists' websites on the Internet."
"Bottled water costs about 200 to 300 times more than tap water - not 2,000 times as much," he wrote.
Gardner did not consider this discrepancy in the cost of water particularly groundbreaking.
"I could say that bottled water is infinitely more expensive than tap water because in Squamish there's no incremental cost to taking another glass of water out of the tap."
During her presentation to council, Carere said despite the common misconception that bottled water is safer than tap water, municipal tap water is more closely regulated. However, the Health Canada website defends bottled water regulations to some extent.
"Both bottled water and municipally distributed tap water that meet or exceed their required health and safety standards are considered to be safe," states the Health Canada website.
However, the Health Canada website does not recommend reusing single-use bottles because it poses a potential microbiological risk if not cleaned properly, but the site has no information about the amount of bottles that end up as litter.
Zupo's letter states if the community's concerns are principally related to recycling and litter, he has a solution.
"We and our industry partners operate Encorp Pacific, which collected and diverted from landfill more than 75 percent of the plastic beverage containers, including bottled water, sold across the province last year.
"We would be interested in talking to you about this initiative."
Gardner said a meeting between himself and Zupo would be unlikely because Zupo was talking about technical issues but Gardner thought staff might be interested.
"I think that's something we've already considered and will continue to consider," said Gardner. "We'll make sure water is easily available to people, particularly around dispensing units."
Gardner said council would receive the letter for information and may be interested in learning more about their recycling methods, but he didn't think Challinor or Zupo's arguments would sway council's decision.
"Evidently Nestle is very active with their industry partners in recycling and we're always looking for ways to increase our efficiency of recycling," said Gardner.
