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BBC Spends $607,000 A Year On Bottled Water
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by Annina Bergman | August 11, 2009 at 01:31 pm
176 views | 28 Recommendations | 3 comments
The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, spends £406,000 ($607,000) of taxpayers' money on water every year, according to the british newspaper the Guardian. BBC released the information as a response to a freedom of information request. The money is used to buy large bottles for water coolers. The corporation would not release information about how much money it spends on small bottles for the 103,000 hospitality events it arranged during 2008.
BBC claims to currently be assessing the health issues surrounding switching from bottled water to tap water. This claim was met with scepticism from Unison and the Taxpayers Alliance, both of which are campaigning for employers to use tap water at work.
The BBC defended itself against accusations of wasting licence fee payers' money on an environmentally destructive practice. A spokesperson said: "The BBC is committed to reducing waste and promoting environmentally sound practices. We are also working to implement a policy of replacing bottled water with other options where they are used, for example, in meetings and hospitality functions. Current contractual commitments are being reviewed and the health issues related to replacing bottled water with jugs of tap water are being assessed."
A regional breakdown showed BBC London and Scotland were the biggest spenders, paying £365,368 combined, with the English regions on £23,690, Northern Ireland spending £16,285 and Wales £1,489. The low figure for BBC Wales is because most of its drinking fountains are supplied by mains water.
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Recommendations (28)
Karl Gotthardt - albertacowpoke
Redwater, Alberta, Canada
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 13:40 on August 11th, 2009
Shocking, need to throw some cold water over my face!!! and I'll use the tap!
at 03:00 on August 12th, 2009
That is outrageous! Shame on the BBC!
at 02:04 on August 13th, 2009
What is shocking is that the £406k is only the tip of the iceberg... when you figure in the costs (that they refused to give) for other forms of bottled water the cost will run into MILLIONS OF POUNDS.
Many of the BBC flagship programmes (World Service, Panorama) agree that bottled water is a waste of money and a quick search of bbb.co.uk "bottled water" will clearly demonstrate that the BBC think it's a waste too... and yet they STILL spend so much on water when they know it's a waste...
I read the original article by the campainging environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy and I am appalled that this is more money then the MP's stole from the public purse in the expenses scandal.
A quick search of the internet will throw up several previous requests under the FOI for the figures on BBC bottled water so it's not like they're not aware of the importance of the matter... all their standard responses have been "it would take too long/cost too much money to find out how much is spent on bottled water" - Sounds like financial mismanagement to me... so it might costs them a few hundred pounds in man hours to figure out what they are spending (surely they do this already???) to save MILLIONS?