Rocky spurs a study on bottled water

Mayors across the country on Monday joined Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson in calling for a study of how bottled water impacts city budgets and waste streams.

Anderson, along with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, sponsored a resolution at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Los Angeles calling for the study, and according to a news release from the nonprofit group Corporate Accountability International, the conference's attendees "overwhelmingly" adopted the resolution.

The vote came after Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association spoke against it.

In November, Anderson sent a letter to members of his Cabinet asking departments to stop handing out bottled water at meetings and interoffice events.

The letter said more than 1.5 million barrels of oil are used each year to produce plastic water bottles, a number that several environmental Web sites corroborate. In addition, Anderson decried the "tremendous amount of fuel" needed to ship water from where it is bottled to where it is consumed.

CAI estimates people in the United States currently spend $11 billion yearly on bottled water, a figure it compared to the estimated $22 billion funding shortfall in the country's municipal water infrastructure budgets.

Other cities have attempted to reduce the use of one-use water bottles in their communities. Most recently, Ann Arbor, Mich., announced it would no longer offer bottled water at city-sponsored events.