Following Mayor Gavin Newsom’s famous 2007 executive order to forbid the use of city funds to purchase bottled water, officials proposed a similar ban on the sale of single use water bottles at events on city property.
Motivated by the “Zero Waste Campaign,” many hoped this possible legislation would decrease the empty water bottles ending up in the city dump. Those in favor of the ban–which would apply to parks, streets, festivals and events such as the San Francisco Pride Parade–say it would be good for the environment and decrease the use of oil needed to produce disposable plastic water bottles.
However, according to the Chron, this proposed “ban” was nothing more than an assignment from Environment Commissioner Ruth Gravanis to Julie Bryant, the City’s zero-waste coordinator to explore the possible logistics of such a ban, to be presented at Monday night’s Environment Commission’s policy committee.
Reporters hoping for a heated discussion on the matter were disappointed to discover a mostly empty conference room. With no public comment and the subcommittee not reaching a quorum, there was no real action taken as “there was no action to take: The report was never intended to be anything more than a brief, cursory answer to Gravanis’ question.”
