It seems like it’s San Fransisco week here at Greenthinkers. First we tout their banning of plastic grocery bags, and now we have to send kudos out to a few of their high end restaurants.

According to the San Fransisco Chronicle, a growing number of sustainably-inclined Bay Area restaurants are ditching bottled water for (free!) tap water. We should hope so, San Fransisco is reported to have amongst the best tap water in the country.

It’s filtered and comes still or sparkling, fizzed up by a soda-fountain-style carbonating machine…Their move away from bottled water reflects concerns not about the bottom line, but about the environmental costs of bottling and transporting water, the energy spent recycling the glass, and keeping plastic out of landfills…Not all decisions about bottled versus tap come down to food miles and bottle-clogged landfills. Other issues include how it tastes, chlorination and, for the immune-impaired, some microbes. There are concerns about industrial chemicals that can infiltrate water supplies and worries about chemicals that leach from plastic water bottles. But those questions cut both ways, since most bottled water starts as tap water.

Maybe the city should start doing this too.