A recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle highlighted the fact that some restaurants are starting to charge for their own, in-house filtered tap water - some people are annoyed. On one hand, this concept can be very upsetting to customers who see it simply as a swindle. It can be quite frustrating to think that a simple glass of water during your meal, would get a dollar tacked on to your bill, as Millennium in San Francisco is now doing. On the other hand, if it became broadly acceptable for restaurants to filter their tap water in-house and charge for it (maybe a dollar is a little high), there would be a huge incentive in the restaurants to stop selling bottled water and invest in their own filtration systems. This would eliminate restaurant contribution to the major problems with bottled water: PET plastic and glass waste and the carbon footprint of shipping water long distances. With the overall benefits in mind, most likely many of us would be willing to pay a water surcharge. The end result would be customers getting better quality water, possibly better than many bottled waters, and a huge amount of waste would be averted.Photo Credit: 'capspaulding' from Flickr
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