Drafter
Clerk 06/09/2008
Title
AN ORDINANCE restricting county purchase of bottled water.
Body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. In 2006 Americans bought a total of thirty-one and two tenths billion liters of water, sold in bottles mostly made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET); it takes nearly nine hundred thousand tons of PET bottles to contain this water. PET bottles are produced from fossil fuels.
2. In 2006, it is estimated that producing the bottles for American consumption required the equivalent of more than seventeen million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation, requiring three liters of water to produce each single liter of bottled water and producing more than two and one-half million tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
3. The potable water throughout King County provides some of the highest quality water in the nation, equal to or exceeding the quality of bottled water.
4. While the average price for bottled water is approximately one dollar per pint bottle, or eight dollars per gallon, the average price for Seattle tap water is only one-third of one cent a gallon.
5. Bottled water is approximately two thousand four hundred times more expensive than tap water.
6. In 1989, the King County council adopted Ordinance 9240, which established the King County recycled product procurement policy. In 2007, on Ordinance 15912, the council adopted an environmental purchasing policy to incorporate environmentally preferable products. The county executive has developed policies and procedures that provide explicit direction and assigns responsibility for implementation to county agencies, departments and offices.
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF KING COUNTY:
SECTION 1. A. After December 31, 2008, King County funds may no longer be used to purchase single serving bottled water, when potable water is available. To reduce the environmental impacts of bottled water, agencies, departments and offices should eliminate ...
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