Bottled water: It harms our environment, uses up our dwindling natural resources and uses up our college tuition money. Gustavus and its students can help put an end to this problem.
Students should use reusable bottles! Students who buy one bottle of water from the cafeteria every day spend 638 dollars each year, but if they bought a reusable container instead, they would only spend 9 dollars each year. Think recycling is a solution? That will only end up costing you more money.
Gustavus should stop selling disposable bottles and start selling reusable containers. If the school does this, Gustavus will become more sustainable, gain more of an environmentally friendly reputation and will be able to compete with other Minnesota private colleges. According to Rick Prososki, purchasing coordinator at Gustavus, “From August 2010 to August 2011, 261,408 bottles of water were sold at Gustavus.” That means 716 bottles were used each day of that year. Now that’s a lot of waste. The “green” reputation gained will be appealing to prospective students because schools are now educating students of more environmental issues. Fourteen colleges in the U.S. and Canada, including the College of St. Benedict and Macalester College, have already stopped their sales of bottled water.
Gustavus should also give reusable water containers to incoming first-years at orientation. The money to buy these bottles could come from the school itself, school organizations or local groups wanting to advertise their name on the bottles. Gustavus spent 496,977 dollars on bottled water for the year of 2010. If Gustavus would buy incoming first-years reusable bottles and stop their sales of disposable bottles, it would save them 496,000 dollars each year.
Stop harming your environment and stop paying for water that you can get for free. Gustavus, stop selling bottled water. Students, use reusable bottles!
Megan Born, ‘13
Undeclared
I don’t understand what you mean by “Gustavus spent 496,977 dollars on bottled water for the year of 2010.” Does this mean the school lost half a million dollars from the sale of bottled water? Or is the $496,977 how much Gustavus paid to obtain the bottles before selling them? I have a hard time believing GAC lost a half million dollars from selling bottled water, so I’m curious where that figure comes from.
However, I do think it would be a wise choice for GAC to cease selling bottled water and switch to reusables. It would unquestionably be more economical for the students, even though the Bookmark would surely charge an arm and a leg for the bottles.
Personally I think it is better to drink eobtltd purified water (UV’d,RO’d distilled, ) than tap water which has been shown to contain upwards of 80+ toxic components which conventional water treatment plants cannot take out. I realize that plastic bottles are an issue of themselves but and I don’t agree with plastic but at the very least it is also better to drink pop and other drinks which are allowed to be sold in plastic bottles? By preventing water from being sold you are encouraging people to drink other liquids which are not as good for a person, i.e. cola. If you are going to stop the ability of water to be sold in a bottle, then all drinks sold in plastic bottles should be banned not just water, AND we should be given purified water to drink out of the tap, i.e. RO’d, UV’d, distilled, I can take a few vitamins to counteract the mineral deficiency. Personally I don’t like the idea of drinking all of the contaminants which have been allowed to be put into our water (on purpose as with Flouride and Chlorine) and conventional water treatment does not take them out. Which is the lesser of the evils? Drinking contaminated drinking water from our tap or drinking purified water from a bottle (preferably glass)?
Why are you singling out only bottled water? Thousands of other food and beverage products (I’m sure many of which are consumed/used on campus by students everyday) come in plastic containers. Why are these other products never the topic of discussion? – because water is “free”? That doesn’t sound like an answer from someone who really cares about the impact of plastic packaging as a whole.
What is your proposal to save money, resources and the planet in regards to the disposable plastic bottles used to package soda pop? The main ingredient in soda is WATER. Should Coca-Cola get a free pass on their plastic soda bottles because they put fattening sugars and syrups in that “free” water you’ve been talking about?
Plus, have you seen a bottle of water lately? They are flimsy as all and have tiny little tops now because the water companies are using something like 75% less plastic than before. Bottled Water companies have at least been reacting to everyone’s concerns. On the other hand, the other plastic packaged products that no one ever calls out as being “bad for the environment” are getting worse. Have you seen the “Simply Orange” orange and apple juice containers recently? This company started just a few years ago in 2001 and have been using the thickest beverage container I have ever seen since their start. Why doesn’t anyone pick on them?
All I’m saying is that I’m sure the entire student body isn’t on a bottled water only diet. Don’t just focus on one product packaged in plastic – that’s not going to solve anything. Instead maybe look to start an initiative for ALL types of companies to use a substitute material in the place of plastic packages.
These college-wide bans on bottled water seem to be popping up all the time now. It frustrates me because to single out the healthiest beverage choice packaged in a plastic bottle and then ban it just seems down right wrong. Where are these thousands of students going to refill their reusable water bottle if god-forbid there is a natural disaster (hurricane, floods, etc.) and their campus water lines burst or become contaminated? I guess everyone will be surviving on sugar water (aka soda)
If you want to see something very interesting, set yourself up with a Google Alert for “Bottled Water”. You will receive a daily mixture of 2 types of articles; Some will say bottled water is the devil and has just been banned at another college campus. In contrast, the other articles are all about cities, schools, colleges and companies who had to purchase thousands of cases of bottled water because their water sources were contaminated for a number of reasons.
That’s just my 2 cents – thanks for reading
Bottled water is singled out because the alternative is so easy to implement. Water fountains are much more abundant than soda dispensers, so it’s much easier to eliminate disposable packages of water than it is for pop.
Regarding the contaminated water supplies, a college deciding to cease selling bottled water won’t (hopefully) ban bottles of water from campus. In the case of contamination, I would hope colleges would be practical enough to seek alternatives such as bottled water rather than drink contaminated water out of principle. On the other side, I don’t think it’s very practical to continue to sell bottled water out of fear of future contamination.
FYI. The reason that soda bottles are thicker than bottled water is that they have to be able to hold the carbonated beverage or it will go flat!
I think the Berkey will be ideal for you, Barbara. A pool is a great rersuoce except for the chlorine, which will also be removed by the Berkey purifier.
“Do you raleise that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?”
I agree that there are thousands of other food and beverage products that produce a lot of waste. Unfortunately, the newspaper only allows 300 words in a letter-to-the-editor. Just because other products were not written about, does not mean I don’t care about them. I think the next step for this would be to write about soda.
I like how bottled water companies are putting an effort into becoming environmentally-friendly. But I would like to take it one step further at Gustavus and eliminate bottled water completely.
I chose to write about bottled water because anyone can find the nearest water fountain on campus and get water instead of paying for water you can get for free. You can’t do this with soda or juice.
Focusing on eliminating one product at Gustavus to start with WILL solve something!
I am not picking on bottled water because it’s the healthiest to drink, but because it is the easiest to eliminate! If a student wants to be healthy and still drink water, they can still get it at a water fountain, and for free!
If a natural disaster occurred, that’s when bottled water would be convenient. But I wouldn’t bet on one occurring.
If the use of bottled water keeps occurring, the more and more bottles will be sitting in landfills, and when they finally degrade into the ground, the plastic will end up contaminating our ground water system. So if you’re worried about contaminated water, stop drinking bottled water.
If you “eliminate bottled water completely” you eliminate the companies (and thousands of jobs) that are capable of filtering/purifying water and that offer spring water processing. You will also put bottlers and distributors completely out of business.
That being said, when emergency situations do arise where city or state-wide municipal water sources are contaminated (including your “free!” water fountains), safe drinking water will not be readily accessible to you…. because the bottled water companies will not longer exist. You said this is the only time bottled water would be convenient – but by then it won’t be an option.
Plus, yYou “wouldn’t bet on [a nautral distaster] happening” – are you kidding me? My home state alone had winter storms, hurricanes and were the epicenter of an earthquake this past year. Every store within a 25 mile radius was out of or short on non-perishable foods, lighters, candles, flashlights, batteries and BOTTLED WATER.
Or what about when you go out of the country where the water sources are not as controlled as they are here. Just imagine, you pull off the road in the middle of nowhere and there’s an old rusty water fountain next to a trash can to your left and to the right there is a vendor selling bottled water, coca colas and assorted snacks in clear plastic packages …. Are you going to take your refillable bottle to the left and fill ‘er up without hesitation? I’m not gonna lie, I’d without a doubt opt for the bottled water.
You may want to look into the landfill statistics before you judge. “When they are not recycled, convenience-sized water bottles do not make up a major part of the waste system, accounting for less than one-third of one percent all waste produced in the U.S. in 2005.” (www.earth911.com)
I guess we can just agree to disagree. I stand next to my hopes that buying bottled water will continue to be a personal choice and option for me. I will also continue to take advantage of my community recycling program to ensure my bottles and other recyclables do not end up in a landfill.
This letter is referring to getting rid of bottled water at GAC, not the entire planet. I don’t think Gustavus is in any danger of being at the epicenter of a natural disaster that prevents bottled water from being delivered here. The point is that disposable plastic bottles are really wasteful and we would be better off if we learn to use them less.
I do not understand your point about eliminating bottlers and distributors. Are you saying we should not strive to become more sustainable if it might eliminate jobs? The reason we need to use less plastic is because the majority of it is petroleum-based; earth won’t suddenly begin producing more petroleum because we’ll lose jobs if it doesn’t.
Recycling plastic bottles is a really good thing to do, but it’s not nearly as good as not using them in the first place. It takes a lot of work to convert recycled material into usable product, and this work could be used elsewhere if we didn’t use so many disposables.
Again, nothing will end the bottled water industry. There will continue to be circumstances that call for bottled water, and these circumstances will probably be a lot less ridiculous than your vendor in the middle of nowhere example. That doesn’t change the fact that bottles get used in situations where they are unbelievably unnecessary.
This is Tom Lauria from the International Bottled Water Association. The single-serve PET iplstac water bottles you are concerned about do nolt contain BPA. Studies going back decades show that PET iplstac is safe for food storage. Medicines, cosmetics and thousands of food products are all safety stored in PET iplstac. The article is also mistaken about how bottled water from municipal sources is produced. It is not just tap water in a bottle. Bottled water products whether from groundwater or public water sources are produced utilizing a multi-barrier approach. From source to finished product, a multi-barrier approach helps prevent possible harmful contamination to the finished product as well as storage, production, and transportation equipment. Measures in a multi-barrier approach may include one or more of the following: source protection, source monitoring, reverse osmosis, distillation, micro-filtration, carbon filtration, ozonation, ultraviolet (UV) light or other safe and effective methods. Many of the steps in a multi-barrier system may be effective in safeguarding bottled water from microbiological and other contamination.In our culture, there should not be a tap water versus bottled water issue. Most people who drink bottled water also drink tap water, depending on the circumstances. Consumers choose bottled water for several reasons, including taste, quality, and convenience. Bottled water is also an alternative to other packaged beverages when consumers want to eliminate or moderate calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial flavors or colors, alcohol and other ingredients from their diets. At a time when obesity, diabetes and heart disease are so prevalent, the consumption of water, whether from the bottle or the tap, is a good thing, and any actions (such as this incorrect eFood article) that discourage people from drinking bottled water are not in the public’s interest.
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