Mayor Richard Daley reached for bottled water to slake his thirst for new tax revenue Wednesday, proposing a 10-cent tariff on every bottle sold in the city.
That $1.25 water from a vending machine could soon cost $1.35. And a 24-pack of Aquafina, advertised for $4.50 at a local grocery chain, would cost $6.90 with the proposed tax, an increase of more than 50 percent.
With millions of water bottles drained each year across the city, the dime-per-bottle tax would add up to a projected $21 million, part of a $293 million package of new taxes, fees and fines proposed by Daley on Wednesday.
The tax would place Chicago squarely in the center of a national debate over the environmental and economic impact of bottled water. The tide appears to be turning on bottled water, a national trend that has spawned a backlash from those who complain that landfills are awash in clear plastic empties. Suddenly, bottled water seems to have fallen to the level of cigarettes and soda pop — an easy tax target.
“Money-wise, it’s a good idea, and environmentally, it’s a good idea,” said Ald. George Cardenas (12th), who proposed the bottled-water tax in August.
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“People get upset when they hear the word tax,” Cardenas said. “There’s no tax on water. There’s a tax on the plastic. [Tap] water is practically free.”
Representatives of the bottled water industry and of major retailers criticized the tax, saying it could force people to turn to less healthy beverages, such as soda.
“It’s the wrong tax, because here we are doing everything possible to [prevent] illnesses and obesity, and discouraging people from drinking water through a tax is not the best thing to do for their health and lifestyle,” said David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.
Vendors will pass the cost of the tax to consumers by raising the price of bottled water purchased at vending machines, said Daniel Stein, co-owner of Mark Vend Co., a Northbrook-based vending service. A bottle of water that costs $1.25 at a machine would cost $1.35 if the tax is approved, Stein said.
The city’s tax on soft drinks — 3 percent of a distributor’s gross sales receipts, or 3 cents for a $1 bottle of soda pop — is already factored into vending machine prices, Stein said.
Supporters of the tax said it could push people away from bottled water and back to tap water, reducing the amount of resources used to package, ship and dispose of bottled water and its containers.
“I think [drinking bottled water] is a waste to the environment,” said Kristina Paschall, 33, of Downers Grove, who compared the potential effects of the tax on bottled water to the effects of taxes on cigarettes.
At the same time that Daley announced his proposal, organizers of a national pledge drive were at the Jardine Water Purification Plant near Navy Pier, holding a news conference to urge Chicagoans to drink water from the tap.
About 700 Chicago-area residents have pledged to drink tap water instead of bottled water, said Elizabeth Martin-Craig, a representative of Corporate Accountability International, which officially launched the local branch of the pledge drive against bottled water Wednesday. Organizers at the activist group hope to gather more than 2,000 signatures in the next few weeks, Martin-Craig said.
Still, the proposed tax has caught some environmentally conscious bottled-water drinkers in the middle.
“As a bottled-water drinker, I’m not amazingly thrilled with it,” said Jay Strother, 40, of Arlington Heights. “But as an environmentalist, I kind of like it.”
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