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What a load of piss!
Why once again hammer the consumer and not the producers of these products. I know full well (just as an example) the amount that Buxton Spring churn out every hour and the profit they make.
What now happens to all of us who recycle everything in to our bin at home? Is the dustbin man going to count them in to the lorry on bin day.
As if anyone is going to gather everything up and take back to the supermarket when there's a perfectly good bin doing the same job outside their house!
Not a clue!
Winds me up to, I'm guessing they'll be doing away with rubbish collections soon, we'll either need to take stuff back to shops for a deposit return or to the tip and have to pay per bag being disposed off.
Also, 95% of my paper recycling is junk mail (even though I've supposedly opted out), why the **** are people allowed to put what's effectively litter through my letterbox! I can't even just stick it in the recycling bag, I've got to take out the envelope windows first thanks to our local rules.
When I was a kid there was a deposit scheme on soft drink bottles.
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
A deposit scheme works.
Plastic bottle deposits work well in other countries, I see no reason for it not to here.
However I'm 100% with you on tackling / taxing directly the companies that produce products or use plastic packaging rather than reusables or biodegradables.
Why once again hammer the consumer and not the producers of these products.
Because how else is it going to get back from the lazy consumer? These schemes work very well in continental Europe.
Plastic bottle deposits work well in other countries, I see no reason for it not to here.
This, like with most things it's not a revolutionary bit of thinking by the UK.
I know full well (just as an example) the amount that Buxton Spring churn out every hour and the profit they make.
There is a simple one there about not buying any bottled water, just one bottle and use a tap again works all over the world.
Wow, what a bunch of whiners ....
The bag charging scheme lead to bag usage going down by about 90%. So something is needed to break the lazy consumer like the OP.
These schemes work really well in places like Germany ( I go every two weeks BTW)
The cost will be funded by the the drinks industry and costs you nothing ....
Better to have the piles of rubbish, right?
Absolutely brilliant idea and long overdue it works very well in other countries so with the right setup here too it should be great success. Of course there’ll always be those who can’t be bothered to take the returns with them when they go out to the shops so they’ll bin them instead.
Would it not also give income to homeless people? We could become a nation of shopping trolley pushing litter collectors. Seems to work well in the USA & India.
I think it's a great idea
All the talk is about "on the go" littering, so a given that your bottle of water from pret, or wherever will be subject to this. The difficult bit is going to be stuff like multipacks bought from supermarkets and consumed at home. If it effectively costs people 20p to put stuff in their home recycling, or else transport the empties to a recycling machine then the scheme will have zero public support.
So then are multipacks exempt ? What about big bottles ?
WTF has it taken so long? Politicians should be embarrassed for their leaden-footness and lack of action
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
We did this as kids too - we'd scour the village to find as many glass bottles as we could. A great source of income in the holidays!
The consumer should be the people that are 'hammered'. The producers are only producing what we consumers want. And overwhelmingly us consumers want our goods available everywhere, to be in pristine condition when we buy them, with attractive packaging with long dates before the goods spoil. So that leads us to plastic packaging, so it is right and proper that us consumers bear the brunt.
Well as somebody who litter picks the Dog and Monkey on Cannock Chase I can only say a brilliant idea, I might become a millionaire!
Did the Monkey yesterday and collected a bag full of rubbish only one week after the last litter pick. Mainly fizzy drink bottles and cans. It would be great if it included gel sachets and their tabs as well.
I'm a bit irked by this, the machines will invariably be in the bloody car park and with 3 kids, 2 of them under 3 I need both hands to stop them getting flattened by some prick doing 30mph in tescos, that's before the 3 year old has told me that he needs a pee Right Now and the new born does a shit that goes from neck to ankle
In a fortnight we generate an entire wheelie bin of mixed glass, metals and plastics, all rinsed and sorted. A trip to the supermarket is already pretty stressful :/
Great idea.
Is it a British disease where we want to change things so long as we don't have to pay for it ourselves? I boils my urine when I'm out in the countryside (or city) and see rubbish everywhere. I guess the manufacturers didn't go out and drop the plastic bottles.....
As consumers we have choice and with choice comes responsibility.
What seems to miss the point though - why have a return scheme for 'single use' bottles and can. Surely the worthwhile opportunity her is for the the stuff the then be re-used.
Up until fairly recently Barr's were still using deposit bottles - 20p a bottle - but the whole point was the bottles were being re-used. I've been in countries where pop bottles have been re-used so many times they're opaque with wear and tear.
With some products the supermarket could be refilling and re-labelling them in house even
I’m a bit irked by this, the machines will invariably be in the bloody car park
Park your car next to the machine, leave kids in the car while you load the machine.
An incentive to get people to engage with recycling and get the containers back into circulation. Seems a good idea to me.
works fine in Norway
all the machines are in supermarkets
Works brilliantly in Sweden and Finland
Fantastic and long overdue in principle. The devil will be in the details of the implementation.
Plastic bottle deposits work well in other countries, I see no reason for it not to here.
This, like with most things it’s not a revolutionary bit of thinking by the UK.
This, evolution innit.
Don't buy bottled water, or buy it and take the bottles back.
At some point the big FMCG’s will change thier plastic bottles and replaced them with recyclable crushable cardboard cartons, which incidentally are cheaper to manufacture..
I was in YO! Sushi last night having supper, I ordered a soda and the guy brought be a drinking straw and not a washable glass.. 🤯🤡
The implementation needs to be such the cost isnt on the consumer, just the reward The returned bottles will be on top of the current recycling efforts.
However if a deposit on plastic bottles is going to hit you hard take a look at how many you are buying and why. Bottled water is costing more than milk in some cases. How can that be right for something that comes out of your tap at home.
A solution to all those who buy bottled water..
Its neat, washable, handy and you may know or have used one in the past.
Science and Rockets it ain’t....
Who actually buys bottled water? I don’t get it.
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
We did this as kids too – we’d scour the village to find as many glass bottles as we could. A great source of income in the holidays!
Hectors .....Rammies........ Gless Cheques.....Gingies....
You were gutted when you spotted one in a bush and it turned out not to have it's lid.
This is how it works in Germany:
Most bottles, plastic crates and some glass jars like yoghurts have a refundable deposit.
There is a machine in the foyer of the supermarket that people use before going shopping.
Single bottles and multiples in crates go in the machine. When you're done, you get a voucher for the tills.
If you carried the full bottles home, the empties go back the next time with you. Its just part of the process
Bottles from corner shops not having these machines can be recycled in supermarket machines
No refund glass goes to the bottle bank, as normal
No refund plastic gets kerbside collected, or take it to a recycling spot as you would do with other stuff.
Cardboard is kerbside collected
It works very well.
When I was a kid there was a deposit scheme on soft drink bottles.
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
A deposit scheme works.
I was thinking the same - am I going to drag bags of old bottles back to the shop? No I’m going to recycle them at home as usual, but the Scouts or the like might fancy it for a bit of extra cash - or enterprising kids might fancy a bit of freelance work.
Yep, still be throwing them in the bin, just like I do with carrier bags.
A populist policy to try to take attention away from a government failing us.
Why once again hammer the consumer and not the producers of these products. I know full well (just as an example) the amount that Buxton Spring churn out every hour and the profit they make.
Surely its consumer behaviour you want to change. Companies supply product where there is market demand. If you slap a "tax" on Buxton Spring for supplying in plastic bottles you force the price of Buxton Spring up, making an imported product potentially more competitive. If Buxton Spring offer a recycling scheme where they get a rebate on that tax for every bottle recycled I am fairly sure that a significant proportion of consumers would see that as boosting their profits and actively avoid it.
What now happens to all of us who recycle everything in to our bin at home?
Stop buying bottled water and use reusable bottle and the shiny thing above your sink to fill it up and you'll have no cost and the same ecowarrier feeling.
Is the dustbin man going to count them in to the lorry on bin day.
No, but mixed waste recycling is very inefficient and a lot of it is contaminated anyway as people don't use the schemes properly. If they see financial incentive to segregate, clean and recycle waste they will more likely bother to do it right. Carrier bags have shown even tiny direct costs can motivate people.
As if anyone is going to gather everything up and take back to the supermarket when there’s a perfectly good bin doing the same job outside their house!
Either the financial cost / incentive is so insignificant you really don't care, or they will. You can't really be frustrated at paying the penalty and believe nobody will bother to use the refund option, the two are contradictory. FWIW we don't have kerb side glass recycling here, but a very large number of people still take their bottles back even without their being a monetary advantage - afterall the bin is in the supermarket car park and you are making the outbound journey anyway.
I buy bottled water as I don't wish to use tap water in my coffee machine.
I'm also cycnical about this scheme. We already have a good scheme which works, I do recycle all plastic and the council pick it up from outside my house once every 2 weeks, great scheme. Little effort to recycle on my part. Under this scheme I'll have to have a have a seperate bin for the special bottles and then find the time to take them wherever they have to be deposited. I don't go to supermarkets much as we get tesco door delivery. Also I was hearing on the radio that there is a possibility it will spit out tokens for the local shop the machine is sitting outside of. I do not want and I wouldn't like cash either. I would want the money to go straight back into my bank account where it came from. However, I can see the benefits so it will be down to how it's implemented under the next labour government. :op
This is how it works in Germany:
Same here, except for the kerbside collections.
The only stuff that get kerbside collection is that which can't be effectively recycled. Oh, and green waste.
We haven't actually filled a wheelie bin with normal household waste in years. That's on fortnightly collections as well.
We just have a couple of Ikea bags for taking the recycling to the centre whenever we are passing.
I've got a bag of cartons and a bag of recyclable plastic in the back of the car now. It'll take me ~2 minutes extra on the way home and drop them in the recycling bins.
TBH, if we didn't have/use a car it'd be a nightmare. And we'd have to look at changing how we buy stuff.
A populist policy to try to take attention away from a government failing us.
Yup, and as they say, every nation gets the government it deserves.
Can see the return of the bottle drive, great for fundraising for organisations.
I do recycle all plastic and the council pick it up from outside my house once every 2 weeks, great scheme. Little effort to recycle on my part.
Good for you, but self-evidently most people are lazy slobs who are happy to screw up the environment if it saves them 2 minutes. Deposit schemes work fine in civilised countries, so maybe there is a chance they would also work in Britain.
Sure I get this might be of benefit for the stuff consumed outside of the house (e.g. someone buying a can from a corner shop and drinking it there and then) but it's bollocks for home use where there's already a convenient recycling system in place. If I'm provided a recycling bag for cans and someone is paid (presumably via council tax) to collect it then why do I now have to take them back to the supermarket to get a 'refund'? As long as multipacks and 1.5L+ plastic bottles are excluded then fine...
Sometimes I think STW is a great place full of kindhearted, funny, supportive and interesting folk. Then sometimes I think it's half full of MCWCBs who will find something to moan about in everything they read no matter how obvious and overwhelming the benefits.
Bottled water for your coffee machine ffs?! Do you wash your bike with Evian as well?!
The machines will constantly be out of order, full, don't accept that bottle etc etc, I can see it fall8ng on it's arse quite quickly. I don't buy bottled water very often as I get it free and when we run out yes I use the good old tap.
But just to get you all frothing I still buy the 5p carrier bags, reuse them, to take sandwiches to work etc and then i use them as bin bags.
Burn me alive!
What's the obsession with bottled water? Water isn't the only drink that comes in plastic bottles you know!
And there must be a need to hit all the [b]unnecessary[/b] plastic packaging? It's like some dimwit from the govt has been tasked with reducing plastic waste and the only thing they could come up with is "Uh, what do they do in other countries? let's copy that".
The machines will constantly be out of order, full, don’t accept that bottle etc etc, I can
Maybe but hopefully if Sainsbury realise that people are shopping at Tesco because their bottle machine is more reliable they will be incentivised to fix it.
scaled - you'll have to stop producing (wink).
I think this scheme is excellent. Hopefully it will stop this fashion for carrying bottled water around everywhere.
Sick of seeing discarded bottles and cans in hedge rows, road sides, footpaths and bridleways.
Hand in your plastic water bottle at supermarket, get handed a fresh one which has been washed and refilled with chilled water, for nowt. If it works, why not provide a system where you can hand in your old pop bottles and get a new one filled from concentrate for half the price? Pay for it by levying VAT at much higher rates on certain bottled products. Might be able to incentivise healthier behaviour if you make sugar-free fill-ups cheaper.
Deposit schemes will reduce litter - let's face it, people will start bin-diving in your recycling.
Pay councils to provide and maintain fresh water dispensers inside stores and on the street.
There are so many ways to reward and encourage good behaviours.
This is how it works in Germany:
...
Single bottles and multiples in crates go in the machine. When you’re done, you get a voucher for the tills.
The voucher barcode is quite hackable too. Print your own with whatever value you want and stick them to the bottom of something you buy, and hope the checkout staff don't spot it 😉 The number is quite simple to work out. It's just a store ID number, the value (in cents) and 1 check digit. And the bar code is one of the very standard ISO ones. There's no link between the bottle return machine and the POS.
I would expect coin exchange machines etc. are similar.
Bottle return works rather well in many other European nations, and has done for decades in many cases. Maybe that's why UK citizens are against it? 😉
I take a bottle back, I get €0.25 or I bung it in a bin and one of the homeless bin divers will take it back and have enough to buy a "tea" (aka booze).
A great idea.
Works very well in plenty of other countries.
Costs the consumer a pittance.
Whining about this is the very definition of a 1st world problem - get over yourselves & get with the program!
This is how it works in Germany:
Haven't you heard - we;ve taken back control!!! None of those forrin ways for us plucky members of the island race!!
Once again it's a scheme that will affect the people who already ensure they recycle.
The supermarkets need to be made to address packaging as a whole - it's cheaper to buy 2 plastic packaged avocado's (other hipster products are available) than 2 single unpackaged ones. In Asda you can buy individual limes for 30p each, or a packaged packet of 4 for £1. How has this been allowed to happen?
I tweeted ASDA about this, but they've not responded...
Who actually buys bottled water? I don’t get it.
We do, but only because my eldest has a sensitive stomach, and even bottles that have been thoroughly washed make him vomit in his sleep, since we switched to single use bottles it has pretty much solved the problem. The youngest has a refilled water bottle and is fine.
I think it's a good idea in theory, especially for places with no recycling facilities, but all of our bottles are recycled with the rubbish collection, and unless it's a big deposit people will still chuck bottles out of car windows, they've spent the money they don't care.
As kids we used to re-cycle the already recycled glass bottles by going into the rear yards of shops & pubs and helping ourselves to what was in the empty crates 😉...but if plod is looking in ..I just made this up !
I agree that the consumer needs encouragement to change, but the manufacturers also need encouragement to use better more reusable, biodegradable and recyclable materials. Most consumers couldn't give a shit what stuff is packaged in, they just follow the crowd. Marketing makes us want fancy packaging, so marketing could also get the consumer to change their opinions. The government should force change onto manufacturers there by forcing the consumer to change and then marketing makes us all believe this is all good. Everybody's happy, apart from the manufactures who need to spend a bit of their profits changing their production lines, but will be happy when they start pulling in the £££'s again.
Like I said earlier, it's a good idea and it should work.....
But heres my take. I run a small village shop, if the recycling drop of points for the bottles are all in supermarkets it's going to drive more trade there way. Or I'll have to match the scheme like for like in cost and recycle any bottles myself at the drop-off point to recoup the money which will make my accounts screwy if it's a voucher system.
The media hasn't gone into any specifics or details (even the retail media don't know how it'll work for shop owners). Im all for additional recycling / planet saving though so will support the scheme or try to surpass it if I can.
people will still chuck bottles out of car windows
Where they will be gathered up by homeless people and Boy Scouts.
How can anyone think this is a bad idea?
The Oceans are full of plastic and if this helps reduce that, then that has to be a good thing.
As for a trip to the supermarket being stressful. FFS. Get a grip.
if it's that bad, pay £3 for delivery or MTFU.
Yep, still be throwing them in the bin, just like I do with carrier bags.
A populist policy to try to take attention away from a government failing us.
It reminds me of the tale of the baby boomer talking to the millennial,
We trashed a planet, used all the resources, polluted the hell out of it, inflated the price of basic needs and took all the profits, whats your generation ever done?
Anything that reduces waste is a good idea.
We've recently bought a Bean to cup coffee machine because of the amount of pod waste we produced.
My wife also bought a SodaStream because she didn't like the number of bottles we went through (I drink filtered tap water. This also goes in the coffee machine). SodaStream have a gas canister replacement scheme so these are recycled (but still require a courier to drive it to/from your house).
Now, my 2 cents... We holiday in Turkey, and nobody drinks the tap water and everything comes in bottles. The amount of waste is horrific. Don't know what the answer is (apart from the government spending less on the military and more on their infrastructure.
So something is to be done about bottles,excellent. Now the world needs a solution for disposable coffee cups.
Julie
Agreed, coffee cups are probably one of the worst disposable units.. they claim to be recyclable yet are coated in a thin plastic film on the inside..and don’t get me started on the sodding lids.
Get a recyclable cup, Morons.
Long overdue, works very well in Germany & Norway.
Agreed missed opportunity with coffee cups.
Reusable not recycled for the win
Again abroad you get a discount for bringing your own cup. Simple solution.
It amazes me, Harrogate Spring produce Bn’s of 1/2ltr and 1ltr bottles a day.. you see them everywhere from corner shops to high end restaurants..
I’m inclined when I’m up there soon to post one of these through thier letterbox.
Why once again hammer the consumer
The consumer isn't going to lose out if they can be bothered to do their bit for recycling. Don't forget, it's YOU (and me and all of us) that are driving this consumption and waste, because you're the one buying it. So you should be doing something about it.
This is great. Finally the government having the balls to do something that might annoy people for the sake of the environment. If we're to survive with anything like a nice world in which to live, we're going to have to take a lot more hits with much greater impact than this.
Bring it on.
It a step towards reducing plastic packaging and increasing recycling rates and hopefully reducing litter which when compared to other western Europe countries we are terrible.
Just because it doesn't solve the entire plastic use and recycling problem doesn't mean that it is not worthy.
Just because it requires a change in behaviour doesn't mean it's not worthy. Infact that is the point. If you are worried about loosing money via curbside pickup then save even more money and don't buy bottled drinks.
The UK is such a small c conversative don't want any change country it's a embarrassing.
Remember leaded petrol, smoking in pubs, ring pulls on cans that came off, free plastic bags etc.
People just got on with it (well except the mail/express readers)
The biggest problem I had with bottle return systems when I went on holiday to Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway last summer was that bottle I had on the train/boat that I'd bought in a shop in the previous country.
Also the stupid German multi-use bottle scheme being different from the single use scheme, single use bottles go back to any shop with a pfand machine, multi-use have to go back to the shop you bought it at, at the counter... or something.
Remember collecting Bru bottles way back... would stash enough of them to pay for a bottle before returning.
Great idea. But it needs to be introduced on drinks cans as well.
Works well abroad. Seen it in action in norway (urban and rural areas) and used it there for years. Take your bottles back and do your shopping - if you can carry the heavy shopping home you can carry the EMPTY bottles to the shop, easy
Let’s do it.
What is people’s problem here?
I live in Germany, it is barely any effort at all to take battles back on my next supermarket visit, and they are surprisingly light when emptied of their contents, if you can carry them out of a supermarket full, you can carry them back empty.
The UK is ****ing filthy, it is the first thing I notice when back visiting, frankly the population needs a kick up its lazy arse.
I live in Germany, it is barely any effort at all to take battles back on my next supermarket visit, and they are surprisingly light when emptied of their contents, if you can carry them out of a supermarket full, you can carry them back empty.
The UK is **** filthy, it is the first thing I notice when back visiting, frankly the population needs a kick up its lazy arse.
This, very much this. It's not hard and we really shouldn't be moaning about this.
The only struggle I have is convincing the GF to move off of bottled fizzy water as soda stream costs more than buying carbonated water.
What’s the obsession with bottled water? Water isn’t the only drink that comes in plastic bottles you know!
It's the only liquid that comes out of a tap in a perfectly drinkable state though.
I think in principle this has to be a good thing but I think there is a few aspects to this, no one can disagree we need to stop doing stupid stuff to destroy the planet (and if you think your little 'bit' doesn't make a difference you've obviously never slept near a mosquito!)
Aside from that:-
* If you go to the supermarket and shop it is a little bit of faff but not a lot and if you don't then yes it will cost you, what price a little inconvenience? Oh yes the planet ... then give / get / pay someone else to do it for you maybe? Or JFDI
* Assume if you get delivery groceries they will also collect them too? Probably.
* I have to wonder if that means that councils will reduce (cough splutter) the council tax as we all won't recycle so much (thinks snowball in hells chance) but an interesting argument.
* What I struggle to understand, beneath the politics, is why the focus on drinks bottles and cans as opposed to all that plastic and cans.
Sadly I think this is just a politically driven thing as opposed to a doing the right thing :/ Politicians ...
James
* What I struggle to understand, beneath the politics, is why the focus on drinks bottles and cans as opposed to all that plastic and cans.
Because this will take a huge effort to get over the line and will have lots of "Angry People in Local Newspapers" to get through to. If they get it going it's a small win but an important first step.
I think there's an element of bottles and cans are really easy to recycle, people just need to return them. Bottles are almost exclusively PET which recycles well, and if you make them more solid you can even reuse them easily, like many bottles on the continent.
Plastic packaging in general is a mess of different plastics that are hard to sort, with varying degrees of recyclability. Which doesn't mean that shouldn't be addressed as well, just that bottles you can make a massive improvement with just a small change in behaviour, so it's an ideal first target.
We do benefit from a Water Supply that is perfectly attributed to humans drinking the stuff.
Since the Victorians first placed healthy sanitary drinking water at the top of their daily requirements the UK has invested £bn's into a system that provides perfectly adequately drinkable product.
One main reason for the influx and profligacy of bottled drinking water originates back in the 70's-80's when the UK was thought of as a shit destination to holiday in. It took the middle classes to gather their offspring to climates warmer, where the water systems were either effluent based or non existent. Bottled Water there is a necessity, not a marketing "luxury".
The sheer amount of money poured into the marketing of Bottled Water as a "premium" product is frankly outrageous. The middles classes took to it like boars at a watering hole, with images of sleek French Women gazing alluringly at their counter body across a swish Mediterranean outdoor cafè then waltzing down Leatherhead High St with a Buxtons Water Bottle cocooned like a new born child. All stunningly ignorant of the production and disposal methods of the image they covet.
My generation has ruined this planet, we should be down well ashamed of the way we treat it and our fellow human beings.
Your kids are better off without us.
Edit :
Just deleted my rant ..apologies if you read it !
Scaled
I’m a bit irked by this, the machines will invariably be in the bloody car park and with 3 kids, 2 of them under 3 I need both hands to stop them getting flattened by some prick doing 30mph in tescos, that’s before the 3 year old has told me that he needs a pee Right Now and the new born does a shit that goes from neck to ankle
In a fortnight we generate an entire wheelie bin of mixed glass, metals and plastics, all rinsed and sorted. A trip to the supermarket is already pretty stressful :/
Aw snowflake. It may come as a shock to you but people in civilised countries that already have recycling under control also breed and have kids. They manage just fine. Why can't you?
I’ve had a post removed by some high brow bloody goody two shoes for saying that as a kid I used to pinch a bottle or two from the back of a pub and claim a refund on it ..laughable isn’t the word !
I still see it...
Just search for the word pub on this page...
You must have been posting that as I was deleting and apologising ..
I also spotted that it hadn't been deleted ..so Again my apologies.
For me personally it seems more effort than the current kerbside recycling scheme but if the weight of evidence suggests that it'll cut plastic waste then I'm very happy to give it a go.
The UK is **** filthy, it is the first thing I notice when back visiting, frankly the population needs a kick up its lazy arse.
Sadly this is true so anything that helps can only be a good thing.
If we get some of those marvellous machines they have in Germany, I'm all for it.
While visiting a mate to help him with his house there, I volunteered to take all the cans and bottles down to the supermarket just so I could watch the machine work - you could see through this one to the various waste bins behind. Watching it spin & scan, and then shoot the bottles out into the appropriate bin at the back was awesome! 😀
(water) "It’s the only liquid that comes out of a tap in a perfectly drinkable state though."
"and is delivered full of limescale (calcium carbonate) and potentially also including sodium, aluminium, chlorine, copper, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese and nitrogen, and compounds made from them."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z99d7p3
"Even if the water leaves the source in a relatively clean state, don't forget that your water travels through pipes, which may have been underground since Victorian times. It is almost impossible for the water not to become contaminated by something undesirable.
Another very important health hazard is fluoride, which is added by some water authorities in the UK. Around 10% of the UK’s water supply is fluoridated, despite a huge and ever-growing body of evidence that the science behind this mass medication programme is questionable to say the least. Fluoridation of water is banned in all other European countries. fluoridation of the public water system is a case of mass medication without consent."
http://freshlysqueezedwater.org.uk/waterarticle_watercontent.php
Now how much of this is true is perhaps questionable but there is no conspiracy pages dedicated to Ashbeck spring water from Tesco which is like 30p a bottle.