Council shows a lotta bottle
Water consumption is costing £8k
Bottled water for staff, councillors and visitors is costing Stirling Council £8000 a year.
The figure includes the cost of 66,000 cups and the overall bottled water bill is 93-times the price of tap water.
Among the council’s buildings and facilities, the biggest consumers of bottled water are said to be Old Viewforth - the base for Stirling’s councillors - plus Allan Lodge, Baker Street Nursery, Bannockburn High School and the Tolbooth.
Officers told the council’s environment and housing committee last Thursday the council’s bottled water consumption had almost halved in the last two years.
Older buildings in particular sometimes still needed drinking water to be supplied but it was proposed to rectify that where possible.
In a report, they added: “A total of 21,762 litres of bottled water was supplied between April 2017 and March 2018. The cost amounts to £4,352, which equates to 51 times the cost of water supplied directly through piping.
“When the cost of plastic cups (61,000) and rental of water coolers is included, the total cost for bottled water supply rises to £7,899, which is 93 times the cost of mains supplied water.
“Due to an incomplete set of data for 2016/17, a direct comparison with last year’s annual consumption cannot be made. However, compared with the 12 months data for 2015/16 there has been a reduction in consumption of bottled water by 18,216 litres (a decrease of 45 per cent) and a decrease of 59,000 (47 per cent) in the number of plastic cups purchased.”
Councillor Alasdair Tollemache said: “We have fantastic water in Scotland. I used to work with Scottish Water and I’m really alarmed and concerned that we are using that much bottled water. Do we have a plan to stop all bottled water use in the council and do we have a deadline for when the council will not be providing bottled water?”
Sustainable development manager David Hopper said: “There is no specific plan but we are looking at minimising the use of single use plastic bottles.”
Senior manager infrastructure Brian Roberts added: “There have been a number of projects that have seen us fit out buildings with filter taps. Sometimes the drinking water supply in some buildings is not suitable and therefore there is bottled water, but the intention is to reduce that and if necessary put in alternative plumbing.”
The officers said more accurate meter readings and better identification of leaking and burst pipes accounted for a drop in figures for the volume of mains water supplied to council buildings.
They added: “Drinking water is supplied directly to refurbished offices via Zip Hydro-tapes, significantly reducing bottled water that might otherwise have been supplied to these offices, although a number of council properties continue to use bottles.”
In response to global concerns over the environmental impacts of plastic waste, the council has also already agreed to review use of single-use plastics throughout the organisation to ensure use is kept to a minimum. A baseline has been established of cutlery (400,000), containers (125,250) and cups (84,250).