BOSTON -- Some Boston-area restaurants said they're planning to stop sales of bottled water at their eateries in an effort to be more environmentally-conscious.

Several restaurant owners in Cambridge and Boston said Thursday they planned to stop selling bottled water and they urged other Hub restaraunteurs to pull bottled water from their menus.

"When water is treated as a commodity instead of as a shared natural resource, our democracy, our health and our environment suffers," Annie Sanders of Corporate Accountability International said.

It's all part of a growing awareness of the environmental costs of producing plastic water bottles. It's a movement that began in California, where efforts to steer diners back to tap water began. It is slowly gaining momentum in other major cities across the country.

"We have some of the best tap water here in Boston in the entire country and there's no reason we should be paying for bottled water," Sanders said.

A recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council concluded that bottled water is not necessarily safer than tap water. The group also found that aside from creating pollution when they're transported, plastic water bottles are infrequently recycled.

The group said "most bottled water comes in recyclable PET plastic bottles, but only about 13 percent of the bottles we use get recycled. In 2005, 2 million tons of plastic water bottles ended up clogging landfills instead of getting recycled."

There is some resistance. The bottled water industry has grown into a $15 billion a year business and for years, bottled water has been a lucrative menu item for restauranteurs. In 2006, Americans bought more than 31 billion liters of bottled water, which took some 17 million gallons of oil to produce. That figure doesn't take into account the costs of shipping and delivery of the water bottles.

"There's a hundred places within a stones throw distance from here that people can get bottled water. If they really need it they'll find a place to get it, but I don't need to participate," said the Other Side Cafe owner Henry Patterson.

Elected officials in Cambridge and Somerville have joined the effort, eliminating the use of taxpayer money to buy bottled water.

"The importance of it to us is really, if you look at the environmental impact of bottled water through the supply chain, those are the things that are invisible to the consumer but really add up to produce a significant environmental impact," Peter Mills of the city of Somerville said.

The city of Boston has also pledged to "Think Outside the Bottle," and will curtail and eliminate the use of bottled water whenever possible.