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Cabinet Secretary announces phasing out of bottled water across government estate

6 March 2008
CAB/020/08

The use of bottled water for meetings and other official business is to be phased out across the whole government estate.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell today wrote to the head of every government department suggesting they should replace bought-in bottled water with tap water for all meetings in future.

A number of departments have already stopped using bottled water for official meetings but the proposal is to extend the ‘tap water only policy’ throughout government departments.

The new policy is expected to come into effect by the summer.

Sir Gus said:

“The Government is committed to sustainable operations across its estate and I have made this issue one of my key priorities for the Civil Service.

“Today’s announcement is a small part of a much bigger programme of action in this area. “

Notes to editors:

1. A number of government departments and agencies, including Defra, the Food Standards Agency and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, have already made the switch from serving bottled water to tap water at meetings.
2. In the last year that Defra used bottled water (2006), caterers supplied 12,600 bottles to the department.
3. Tap water requires around 300 times less energy than bottled water (for packaging and transport) and does not leave bottles to be disposed of.

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