UK: Government pulls plug on bottled water

Bottles of water will no longer be served at British government meetings under a "tap water only" policy announced on Thursday to protect the environment. Britain's top civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, sent the order to all government departments, saying the policy would come into effect by the summer.

Britain has seen the stirrings of a public backlash against bottled drinking water, with politicians and public figures saying they never order it and newspapers calling on restaurants to stop serving it.

The Treasury has already announced that Chancellor Alistair Darling will be sipping only tap water during the gruelling ritual of reading out his first budget in parliament next week. Gordon Brown, his predecessor and now prime minister, drank the bottled stuff.

"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 cabinet office said in a statement.

"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," O'Donnell said. "Today's announcement is a small part of a much bigger programme of action in this area."

A cabinet office spokeswoman said there was no central figure for how much bottled water would now no longer be drunk across all the departments of Britain's government.

But as an example, caterers supplied 12,600 bottles of water for meetings at the environment and farming ministry in 2006, before it switched to tap water last year.