The map that helps you drink the water from the fountains instead of the mineral one
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Italy is experiencing the worst water crisis in its history: what we left behind was the hottest year ever recorded in Italy – +2.7 degrees higher than the average – with a drop in rainfall of about 48 mm. At this rate, water flows will be reduced by 40% by 2080 and the summer of Turin will burn like that of Pakistan’s Karachi, in less than eighty years. Water is a precious, irreplaceable and limited resource. It must be used wisely, but not only. It is urgent to adopt behaviors commonly defined as “sustainable”, which can contribute to reversing the ongoing climate change.
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Venice Tap Water works precisely in this direction and in a city overwhelmed by tourists every day, the Venetian Marco Capovilla has put into practice a simple but effective idea: to make available a mapping of all the fish-shaped fountains on the island, so that everyone can autonomously stock up and fill up your water bottle, without buying useless plastic bottles and thus contributing to city pollution. Let’s start with a fact: every year Venice is visited by at least 23 million tourists, numbers that are constantly growing which have repeatedly led the administration to fear solutions to restrict admissions. Not only that: every refueling in Venice is a complicated matter, logistically certain, but above all because it takes place through boats in many cases dated, responsible according to a recent study carried out by the Ca’ Foscari University of 9% of the nanoparticles that feed the Venetian smog.
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On the Venice Tap Water web page, a link refers to the mapping carried out by Veritas – the fully public joint-stock company that deals with environmental and water services in the Veneto region – with an indication of the 141 active fountains in Venice, divided by islands and districts, foundations, parks and calli. On the small island of Mazzorbo there are three, among the glass worked on the island of Murano fourteen, in the Dorsoduro district at least twenty. “Water is a certain right, but we take it for granted and it deserves greater consideration – explains Capovilla – then even more in Venice: the issue of transport has a heavy impact and I am not speaking in economic terms but in terms of environmental impact. L he water from our fountains is good, healthy, why not exploit it?”. Through the Venezia Pulita Facebook group, Venice Tap Water has been making itself known since 2019 to hoteliers and restaurateurs who are starting to recommend the portal to tourists and access to the portal is growing exponentially. “To facilitate the usability of the site, we are creating an app that will soon be available, thanks to which anyone will be able to identify the nearest fountain, reach it and therefore easily refill”. Yet there is a glass roof to be broken: the reluctance of many to drink tap water. This is the scenario that also emerges in the Valore Acqua White Book, produced by The European House – Ambrosetti: despite the fact that Italians declare that they adopt sustainable behaviors (96% of the sample interviewed) less than a third consume tap water.
A finding that comes as no surprise: we are the largest consumers of bottled mineral water in Europe and in the world. The reason? Concern about quality assurance (followed by a taste problem). Yet Italy is the country where the quality of the water in the network is among the highest in Europe: 85% of the resource is taken from underground sources (therefore protected and of high quality) against 69% in Germany, the 67% of France, 32% of Spain and the United Kingdom, up to 23% of Sweden. Consumption from public dispensers also remains not widespread: drinking fountains, water houses and public dispensers, due to their limited diffusion, the interviewees point out.
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Venice Tap Water aims to reduce this information gap: the drinking water supplied by Veritas is mostly groundwater, drawn from wells that reach a depth of 300 metres. It is among the best in Italy in terms of quality and characteristics, economical, carefully controlled and safe. It does not cross Italy on trucks (it is at km 0) and to be transported it does not need bottles or packaging, therefore it does not produce waste. To have it, always fresh, simply open a tap. Italians, on the other hand, are the world’s largest consumers of mineral waters. A liter of water dispensed by Veritas costs around 0.0015 euros, 1,000 times less than a half-litre bottle of mineral water bought in a bar. According to Istat we spend 151 euros a year (the value is constantly growing) to buy plastic bottles that contain drinking water very similar to those of the aqueducts. “And yet – concludes Capovilla – in the most attentive time slots, those of the evening news, you only see advertisements for bottled water. But where are the progress advertising campaigns that have put communication for awareness at the service of the relevant social issues? The right thing would be to discourage the habit of drinking mineral water, especially if it is bottled in plastic hundreds of kilometers from home and transported for very long journeys by lorry”.
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