Thirsty? Skip bottled water, look for the blue 'W'

Forget "facilities for patrons only,"the City of Waterloo is encouraging local businesses to open their doors to thirsty residents, by putting blue "W"decals on their doors.

The decal indicates the building is a water-bottle friendly establishment, where anyone can fill up their containers with tap water, no hassle, no charge.

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Most of themare on public buildings or small privately-owned businesses, but some chains have signed on including the Running Room and Tim Hortons in uptown Waterloo.

"It seemed like a great idea," said Neil Moser, marketing manager for Insight Eyecare, also located in uptown.

"You can stop by, you can fill up your water, there's no pressure to come in and buy, it's just 'Hey, we're here, you're welcome' and that kind of appealed to us."

Choose water over pop

The Blue W initiative is actually based on an online database,created by Guelph resident, Evan Pilkington. According to his website it's"dedicated to promoting municipal tap water as a healthy, easily accessible alternative to purchasing bottled drinks."

The city hopes it will make it easier for people to choose water instead of sugar-laden beverages, like juice or pop,said NancyHall-Jupp, supervisor of leisure and active living programs with the City of Waterloo.

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"What we're trying to focus on is choosing the healthy option,it's part of your everyday. So if you'rethirsty you think of grabbing water instead of another option," said Hall-Jupp.

Tap vs. Bottled water

The tap water vs. bottled water debate has been a hot one in Southwestern Ontario in recent months, as a dry summer left much of the province in near-drought conditions while Nestle Water has been embroiled in a public fight for the right to draw up to 1.6 million litres a day from an aquifer near Elora.

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• Ontario considering changes to permits for bottled water companies

Though the blue W project does encouragepeople to drink tap over bottled water, it's not connected to the Ontario water-taking permit debacle.

But it has drawn attention to the resource.

"We have water that is amazing and readily accessible to us, it's just this weird phenomenon," said Moser.

"When you put it into perspective, there are so many people in the world that would just kill for a few drops from a faucet that, you know, aren't going to hurt them."

"We have all this at our disposal, so it seems to me, personally, a bit of a waste."