Drinking Water, an Italian State of Mind!

“Nasone“, the typical fountain of Rome

“Ti Voglio Bere” (”I want to drink you”) is the name of a project realized in the city of Torino to promote the use of drinking water. The similarity with the overused sentence “Ti voglio bene” (”I love you”) remind us we should appreciate more this basic element that arrives free in our houses.

Water is a public good even if the market wants to persuade us of the contrary. Water is not a drink as well as air we breathe is not a perfume. It’s a right we have to protect.

Italy is the main consumer of drinking water in the world. For us, there is no problem: not many households keep soft drinks or beer ready in the fridge, but everyone’s always got water. The only two beverages that you see on most Italian tables are water and wine.

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In the last year the national mineral water use has grown a 3% arriving to 190 litres per person, 8 times the global average. A large part of Italian population prefers bottled water spending about 3.2 billion Euros each year. More than 300 different brands of mineral water are present in Italy, bottled under their commercial names and with an indication of the place in which they well up and are bottled. We have 4 big groups that manage a 54.5% of the market: Sanpellegrino-Nestlé, San Benedetto, Rocchetta/Uliveto and Ferrarelle. With an export of almost 1 billion of litres per year.

A negative record because bottled water means pollution: transportation problems, thus energy consumption and pollution, and waste problems. Glass water bottles are recyclable and within a certain extent plastic bottles as well. But in Italy a 65% of water is bottled in plastic: every year 350.000 tons of plastic bottles are thrown away and only a 34% is recycled.

Compared to tap water, which is daily controlled, bottled water offers less warranties of official controls. During their use plastic bottles don’t ensure the hygienic safety ensured by glass bottles, since they can lose unwanted compounds in water, particularly if they are stocked in a warm place or under the sunlight.

As always happen, the power of a pressing marketing encourages people to buy and buy… spending a lot of money for something that arrives free and checked in our houses!

In Italy, a 96% of water that comes out of our taps is perfectly potable. In fact, it’s subjected to an “internal” control by the administrator of the aqueduct and an “external” control by the local Health Department. These prescribe which substances can be in drinking water and what the maximum amount of these substances are (the standards are called maximum contaminant levels).

Drinking water contains small amounts of bacteria, most of these generally not harmful. Chlorine is usually added to drinking water to prevent bacterial growth while the water streams through pipelines. This is why there are minimal amounts of chlorine: an “unpleasant taste” that disappears leaving potable water in our fridge for a while. Urban Italians also don’t like potable water because it’s very “hard”, full of calcium. But calcium is essential in our body and many bottled water don’t ensure the necessary amount of this component.

Water, we said, is a public good but sometimes its exploitation can be given in concession to private people. Italian aqueducts represent a business and in the last 5 years water management has been concentrated in few hands. In July 2007 more than 400.000 citizens presented a petition to the Italian Parliament in order to maintain a public administration of drinking water.

As a paradox Italy is a country rich in springs, usually of a very high quality. In communities that have particularly good water, restaurants will put a carafe of the local water on the table before offering you the bottled. Many town squares still feature the municipal fountains where people used to get their water before indoor plumbing became common. In Rome there are more than 2.000 fountains providing very good drinking water at the citizens’ disposal. Does all this make sense?

More information about drinking water in Italy:

Imbrocchiamola! - Mineracqua - Acqua Bene Comune - Contratto Acqua

Image credit: Giulietto86 (Flickr)

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