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Italians Get With the Program, Start Drinking Tap Water

Great news coming out of the country that drinks more delicious bottled water than any other in the world: Venice is finally encouraging its...

Siobhan O'Connor
By Siobhan O'ConnorJun 14, 2009
Siobhan O'Connor
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Great news coming out of the country that drinks more delicious bottled water than any other in the world: Venice is finally encouraging its residents to take from the tap and stop clogging the city with bottles.This piece in The New York Times says that Italians drink 40 gallons of bottled water per person, per year. (We Americans drink a not-so-paltry 29.) That's a lot of bottles, plastic or glass, to have to get rid of by foot, since Venice doesn't have roads. So the mayor launched a campaign (see the hilarious poster) to get people to start drinking tap water, which, it turns out, is very delicious.To boost the campaign, the mayor's office even leaked the juicy fact that "Venice's tap water comes from deep underground in the same region as one of Italy's most popular bottled waters, San Benedetto."Anyway, this is great, even if the self-congratulatory tone folks use when they tell you they drink tap water is kind of annoying at times, whatever it takes to get the rest of the bottled-water-drinking world up to speed is good news.

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