London Mayor Ken Livingstone on Tuesday launched a blitz against bottled mineral water, urging restaurant customers in the British capital to ask for tap water to help the environment.

Livingstone said tap water was not only cheaper but also comes without the heavy carbon footprint of transporting bottled varieties by road and often vast distances by air from countries as far away as Fiji and New Zealand.

"People should be encouraged to ask and feel confident they can ask in restaurants for tap water, rather than have to pay through the nose for bottled water," he told his weekly news conference.

The initiative, backed by utility Thames Water and environmental groups, follows recent comments from environment minister Phil Woolas on the two-billion-pound (2.6-billion-euro, 3.9-billion-dollar) a year industry.

Woolas told a BBC television documentary that "it borders on morally being unacceptable" for Britons to spend so much on mineral water when there was a worldwide water shortage and pure drinking water was readily available.

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