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Metro Waste Authority (MWA) is asking, why buy a bottle of water for $1 when you can get water for free anywhere?

The agency is giving the public the ability to access free tap water at cafés, coffeehouses and restaurants throughout the Des Moines area through an innovative program started in New York City called TapIt.

“Thirty years ago, who would have thought that you would go in and pay a dollar something for a little bottle of water in a convenience store? They would have laughed at you, and now we do it,” said Tom Hadden, MWA’s executive director.

TapIt functions by recruiting cafés and coffeehouses to place a TapIt sticker in their windows and allow the public to refill reusable water bottles from the tap at no charge.

“So maybe we can take the curve back the other way and say let’s think about (buying bottled water),” Hadden said. “We don’t have to produce waste, and you can save yourself some money.”

Alexander Grgurich, an MWA board member, saw the program functioning in New York City and brought the idea back with him. TapIt is the brainchild of Kylie Harper, a New York resident who founded the program in 2008.

“As water fountains have become less and less available in towns and urban areas, I just thought about how do you make water more accessible,” Harper said.

“It is very easy to drink tap water at home, but when you are on the go, the first thing you do is buy bottled water.”

The program aims to reduce the waste from plastic water bottles, and help curb the bulk water extraction process major bottlers use for bottling water, which Harper said has negative consequences on ecosystems and global climate change.

Another benefit is the use of Des Moines’ award-winning local water supply. Des Moines was ranked as the No. 1 city in Forbes magazine’s rankings for cleanest drinking water, because of its water’s low levels of bacteria and lead, among other characteristics.

Still, the program hinges on the public buying into the idea that water from the tap can be just as clean as or cleaner than bottled water. Forbes provides a nudge: The magazine reported that an estimated 40 percent of bottled water, including brands like Coca-Cola Co.’s Dasani and PepsiCo Inc.’s Aquafina, comes from ordinary municipal water systems.

“It is kind of getting over that hurdle that we’ve got to a place in this country where we feel that the only good water is something in a bottle,” Hadden said. “Which is really amazing how far that’s come and how they have done a great job of marketing, when really the water in the bottle is usually from a tap and maybe gone through a filter.”

Measuring the success of the program will be nearly impossible, Hadden said. Privately, MWA would love to get the water bottling industry calling in with complaints, but it would settle for knowing that it is helping start a grass-roots movement for sustainability at very little cost.

“When you are talking about recycling and resources and sustainability, there are no silver bullets,” Hadden said. “It’s just incremental little things, and this is just another one of those little things you can do. Before you are recycling bottles, you’d like to say don’t even use them.”

Despite the minimal cost of stickers (a couple hundred dollars at most for a supply), the program is free of cost for participating merchants and requires no capital investment, Hadden said, leaving little risk in putting the program in action.

“Every time you see a person going in and filling up, that is a potential savings right there,” he said.

“It is going to be tough to quantify, but the beauty of it is it’s so simple and low-cost. I mean, what are you out?”

Area businesses could see a positive impact from the program as well, said Amanda Carstens Steward, MWA’s program manager. The TapIt program is sold to the local businesses on the idea that because they are in this program, foot traffic could increase in their stores.

“It may bring new people to your store that hadn’t been there before,” Steward said. “And you know, you walk in and you see that pastry, you might pick it up without intending to. Our hope is that it will generate traffic for those stores, and help them feel good. Everyone wants to do green initiatives, and this is an easy way for them to be a part of a green initiative at really no cost to them.”

David Clemens, the store director at Gateway Market Café on Woodland Avenue in Des Moines, said his store joined the program to make an environmental impact and for the added benefit of extra customer traffic. He also said he didn’t foresee any problems or negatives from participating and wasn’t worried about a loss of bottled water sales.

“I believe it is a different customer,” Clemens said. “The refill program is for people that are already a little bit more environmentally conscious, because they are bringing in their own plastic bottles to refill, and they aren’t buying the bottled water anyway.”

The program has also been cleared of any health concerns by both the Polk County Health Department and the Iowa Department of Public Health.

Steward said MWA reached out initially to area chambers of commerce, and currently has nine businesses committed to the program, which is now operational. She said they are targeting cafés and coffeehouses the most heavily, but have gotten interest from a fitness center as well.

“Obviously right now, (eight) in the metro area isn’t going to cut it, but we hope that as it grows throughout the metro area, and if you are in any one of those cities there is an option for you nearby,” she said.

MWA would like to get between 100 and 150 locations in the area to commit, and judging by the success in New York City, it might not take that long. Harper said she now has approximately 250 locations committed, after initially having three or four when the program started in 2008.

TapIt has been so successful that it is currently expanding to other cities, including Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. In total, the program is operational in 10 states.

People can go to TapIt’s Web site – www.tapitwater.com – to find participating locations in each of the cities and can even download an iPhone app so they can find locations when they are out and about.

So far, Harper has not received any complaints about the program from participating businesses or the bottling companies.

“These water bottle companies – Coke, Nestle and Pepsi – they are so huge, we would just be a blip on their radar screen, not even a blip,” Harper said. “But we don’t expect that at all. We are flying under the radar. I don’t think we would be of much interest to them … sadly.”

Then again, 30 years from now, who says the public won’t laugh at people buying bottled water?