Pet Bottle Consumption In Canadian Academy
Marie Kuyumgyan
Bottled drinks; especially bottled water is vastly more expensive than oil.
How is this possible? Isn’t water worth 1.50 cents per 150ml, and compared to
that, oil is 100 times the price? This is all a big misunderstanding, as bottled
drinks, such as water is sold extensively more expensively than oil. Most
municipal water costs less than 2 cent per gallon. Nonetheless, the price of
gasoline is a fraction over 2 cents an ounce (128 ounces in a gallon). Though this
tiny fraction more of oil may seem like a big difference, keeping in mind that oil
need to be pumped out of the ground for crude oil, shipped to a refinery, and
then shipped to your local markets, oil is overall cheaper than water. Not only
are bottled drinks immensely expensive, but are hazardous to the environment
therefore, the consumption of pet bottles in Canadian Academy should be
decreased significantly.
The current problem Canadian Academy faces is the colossal
consumption of pet bottles. As Canadian Academy supplies numerous vending
machines on campus and through Cezars Kitchen, CA is unknowingly shifting the
student’s dependency of bringing their own water bottles to purchasing pet
bottled drinks. This has triggering an immense problem as in result of easy and
cheap purchase of pet bottled drinks, students are purchasing 2-3 on a daily
bases (according to survey results) when they could be purchasing none. It not
only generates a bad habit for the students, but creates an un-eco friendly and
costly cycle. Statistics show, that an average person spend around 1,000$ of
bottled drinks yearly. Although Canadian Academy (CA) recycles the mass
consumption of pet bottles, after further research, recycling proves to cause
further hazards to the environment than not recycling.
As the consumption of pet bottle in CA is immense, it is a clear indicator
that it is a problem, and unknowingly we as a CA community are contributing to
part of a wider global problem. On average, Cezars Kitchen orders around 3,000
pet bottles monthly. This may seem way more then necessary, but students and
faculty members devour all of the 3,000 pet bottles every month. On top of the
3,000 pet bottled drinks that are sold through Cezars Kitchen, 800 drinks are
sold through the vending machine’s. From this data, CA’s total pet bottle
consumption in a year totals up to 45,600 pet bottles. This is an extensive
amount as the oil used for creating 45,600 pet bottle’s can keep 100 cars running
for a year. (National Geographic Kids,2011) After conducting a survey, statistics
showed that the majority of the people that purchase pet bottled drinks say that
they would purchase water over any other drink. This is ironic as they can easily
get free and delicious water from the water fountain or the free and 2,000 time
cheaper tap. From the data collected, there is a clear connection between the lack
of knowledge of students regarding recycling pet bottles and purchasing of pet
bottles correlate. As students are clueless about recycling or why the pet bottles
are bad, they continue purchasing pet bottled drinks.
Pet bottles are extremely harmful to the environment as it
Without consumers realizing that pet bottles are tremendously harmful to
the environment, they continue purchasing it because of the propaganda put
forth by bottled water companies
Some solutions that can be introduced to Canadian Academy in order to
decrease the consumption of pet bottle include a complete eradication of
vending machines. Completely eradicating vending machines will leave students
with no other choice but to use the water fountain, consequently, there will be a
quick decrease of pet bottles. Another idea is to provide an incentive for students
to bring in their own water bottles and use the water fount to fill up their water
bottles or have a system through Cezars Kitchen that will allow students to
purchase drinks for a lower price than the vending machines and fill it in their
water bottles or make all the drinks in the vending machines cans. At the very
end, the one method that I believe will work the utmost best is creating an
incentive for not only students but the stakeholders of vending machine users to
bring in their own water bottles. To further explain what my method it, it is going
to be a system where the school or Cezars Kitchen will provide an drink booth.
The students that bring their own water bottles will only be able to use it, also
the price of the drink booth compared to the drinks in the vending machine will
be significantly cheaper (50% cheaper). This drinking machine will consist of the
similar drinks sold in the vending machines, and more variety, thus the students
will not be able to resist the cheap and delicious drinks. They will soon realize
that it will be better if they bring in their own water bottles, hence the decrease
in pet bottle consumption. Although this may be a very achievable idea that is
very easy to implement, there may be roadblocks the come in the way. As the
demand of the drink booth grows,
The whole process of recycling and the creation or the life cycle of a pet
bottle is not as expected. It is both damaging to the environment and