Bottled water: industry must react to Bundanoon ban; The Australian town of Bundanoon has banned sales of bottled water

Datamonitor CommentWire, July 10, 2009 Friday 4:14 PM GMT

An Australian town situated approximately 100 miles south of Sydney in New South Wales is believed to be the first community in the world to have banned sales of bottled water. A gathering of 350 Bundanoon residents voted almost unanimously to ban sales from September 2009. Proposed replacement schemes include shops selling reusable containers that can be filled at public water fountains or, for a nominal fee, with filtered water at stores. Controversy surrounding local bottled water operations in Bundanoon may well have influenced the move.

Plans were announced to build a water extraction plant in the town, which would have taken water from Bundanoon to Sydney for processing and bottling, before some bottles would have inevitably been returned to the town for sale. The proposals provoked much anger among residents and a court battle is still being waged to determine the fate of the plant. Meanwhile, New South Wales premier Nathan Rees has also banned government officials in the state from buying bottled water, declaring that all New South Wales government departments would be switching to tap water. Bottled water has proved extremely popular in Australia, with an estimated $390m spent on the industry in 2008. For a country with a population of just under 22 million people, this represents a substantial business, and gives any bans on sale an increased significance. These recent events may not signal the death of the bottled water industry just yet, but they do serve to showcase the depth of feeling among some consumers with regards to bottled water. Other establishments could now follow the precedent set in Bundanoon, and a domino effect would be catastrophic. The industry must react to stories such as these and ensure that its operations can become cleaner and greener in the near future, in order to ensure that these incidents remain isolated. For more information on the growing sustainable packaging trend, see Datamonitor's report entitled Sustainable Packaging Trends: Consumer Perspectives and Product Opportunities, which was published in April 2009