North Shore Outlook reports, “Already fancying itself a green community, the City of North Vancouver took steps at Monday night’s council meeting to becoming a blue community as well. In a unanimous vote, council endorsed the Blue Communities Project ‘in principle’. …Since 2009, the city has worked to phase out bottled water at its facilities. Both city hall and the city works yard no longer offer bottled water. The city has also been working to add water fountains to public parks.”
“The Blue Communities Project is a joint initiative between the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Council of Canadians and Quebec-based water watchdog Eau Secours! To be recognized as a Blue Community, a municipality must agree to three basic provisions: Recognize water as a basic human right, promote publicly owned and operated water infrastructure and ban the sale of bottled water at publicly owned facilities and public events.”
“Council did, however, request more information from staff about all the steps involved in achieving Blue Community status. Coun. Guy Heywood, for instance, asked whether there are any exceptions to the rules, citing recreation facilities as one place bottled water may remain if removing the product meant only having ‘sugary beverages’ available. Coun. Craig Keating called the issue ‘tremendously important’ but requested information from both Burnaby and Victoria, cities already signed on to the initiative.”
“For more information on the Blue Community project visit http://canadians.org/bluecommunities or http://www.cupe.ca/water.”
