Progress! House Members Call for Bottled Water Spending Cuts

On this site alone, almost 50,000 people have emailed Congress in seeking an end to wasteful taxpayer spending on bottled water purchases.

Today, we made doubly sure that Speaker Boehner got the message, and are pleased to report that a few members of Congress already have.

At an event on Capitol Hill, Change.org joined Corporate Accountability International and Food & Water Watch in delivering your signatures and comments to Speaker of the House John Boehner. The signatures underscore our request that our taxpayer money should go towards funding our crumbling water infrastructure—not wasted on purchasing water that's often repackaged from the tap. In a report released today, Corporate Accountability International estimates that in one year alone, the House of Representatives by itself spent at least $860,000 on bottled water—that's about $2,000 per House member, or enough to purchase literally 900 deluxe water fountains with refrigerated and filtered water of 4,000 basic models.

They also reported progress on the campaign. Already 16 Congressional offices have taken action to reduce spending on bottled water, Democrats and Republicans alike. "The bottled water buck stops here. As a new Member of Congress, I am transitioning our office water system into an in-office filtration system because bottled water in unnecessarily costly and in addition, purchasing it sends the wrong message of our public water supply," said one member, Rep. David Cicilline (RI) in a statement. At the event, we toured the office of Oregon Rep. Earl Bluemnauer, whose DC office saves at least $500 a year with its tap water system. 

A great contingent supported the campaign today at the event: DC Water's General Manager George Hawkins, who has already kindly offered to provide Congress with free reusable bottles and water quality testing; Bruce Williams, mayor of Takoma Park, Maryland, one of more than 125 city governments making strides to be bottled water free; students from American University, one of 9 university campuses that's working on major bottled water reduction measures; and DC's own Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who wants to make sure Congress starts to remedy today's $22 billion investment gap for public water systems and asks for a plastic bottle free Anacostia River.

In the video below, DC Water's George Hawkins thanks all of you who signed this campaign and explains why it's such an important issue to him. "There's no issue more important to civilization—literally—than the ability to deliver clean water quickly to everyone…every business, every job, every building," he says.

As I wrote about recently, Corporate Accountability International has and will continue to convince more offices to phase out bottled water spending in both the House and the Senate, often by working with individual members of Congress to move their offices on the issue. That's why it's important both Speaker Boehner and your own representative continue to hear from you that this is a priority for so many reasons.

This campaign is symbolic and also practical. As Speaker Boehner tries to slash the House budget by 5 percent, a bottled water phase-out would contribute to belt-tightening measures. It's also symbolic. In the last 2 decades, marketing claims from bottled water giants such as Nestle have convinced Americans to stop drinking from the tap. As a result, about 70 percent of Congress's $860,000 in bottled water expenditures went straight to bottled water giant Nestle, maker of Deer Park, Arrowhead and Poland Springs brands. Unfortunately, the elected body that's responsible for repairing and expanding clean drinking water infrastructure is not confident in its investment.

Keep signing the petition. And stay tuned for videos and photos from the press conference, which I'll upload later today.

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