Bottled water is surely one of the great absurdities of our age.  Can you imagine having to explain it to someone in the future? It’s not a comfortable exercise.

“Well you see it’s like this - back in 21st century UK we had this energy-efficient system for transporting fresh, clean, drinkable water to every habitable building in the country at a cost of about £1 per 1,000 litres which was great but nobody was making any serious money out of that, so some clever people came up with the idea of distributing it in expertly branded bottles that were then sold at at least 1000 times the price – petrol was often cheaper, isn’t that amazing? At first we didn’t know we needed it, but quite soon we wondered how we’d ever lived without it. We also trucked it all over the globe, so they could drink water from the hills of Wales in Hollywood and sip on Fijian water in posh London restaurants which all seemed quite important at the time.  Admittedly this didn’t help the 1 billion people without access to safe water very much but I guess that’s one of life’s little ironies. Environmental costs? I did hear it mentioned…”

I’m embarrassed just thinking about it – not only am I an ex-user, I used to peddle the stuff too.

We stopped selling it in Y Polyn about 2 years ago and installed a filtration system instead. Now customers get unlimited still or sparkling filtered water at no charge. At the time I made a rough estimate that we would forego about £10,000 or more in potential profit annually but as we always gave a jug of tap water anyway the actual difference when we cut the bottled stuff completely was much less significant.

I’ve noticed that a number of restaurants using the same system make a charge. Recently I paid £2.50 for each bottle of filtered water we consumed at a restaurant in Wales. How they make their money is up to them, but I don’t think it’s the type of practice that does the restaurant trade many favours. It’s one of those things like tips policy and service charges where I think the customer can feel that the restaurant is being a little slippery in the way it ups the bill.

I wouldn’t be comfortable with charging that kind of money for something that costs a few pence to produce and administer. I think our system costs us around £40 a week to rent and then there is a little staff time spent filling the bottles and cleaning them, but it’s negligible really. I’m guessing we do about 1000 bottles a week so that’s 4p per bottle plus the staff costs. I guess we could legitimately charge say 30p a bottle, but I’d rather just include it in the overall price, just as we do with bread and service.

I have a feeling we’ll see bottled water sales in restaurants wither away in the next few years but it would be nice to see the industry leading the way, offering tap water as a matter of policy and kicking the bottle.