Day 22: Water
Name: Emi
School: Rice University
Greenest
Annie Leonard's Story of Bottled Water
1. Bottled water is lower quality and less regulated than tap water
2. Bottled water costs 2000x the cost of tap water
3. Americans buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week - enough to circle the globe
more than five times. EACH WEEK.
4. The bottled water industry makes its money by scaring people about tap water
5. A lot of 'recycled' bottles are just shipped to India and downcycled
6. One third of bottled water comes from filtered tap water
7. The oil used to make bottled water each year in the US is enough to fuel a million cars
8. 80% of plastic bottles end up in landfills or incinerators
Taking Back the Tap: 3 Reasons to Transition
from Bottled Water to Tap Water
1. Bottled water reallocates community water to other areas of the country, and sometimes those
communities can't afford this loss.
2. Bottled water is 2000x as energy intensive as tap water and uses infinitely more petroleum to
produce.
3. The campaign against bottled water raises awareness about other environmental problems that
students might not know about.
Rice University Bottled Water
Look at all the bottled water being sold at Rice! Aquifina, Fiji, Vita, Powerade, Gatorade... and I didn't
even include Ozarka, which is used at all of the university events. I included sports drinks because I think
people unnecessarily drink them with the belief that they'll make them better athletes. In reality, regular
tap water is just as good at hydrating. What's worse is that, while sometimes people may refill bottled
water, nobody refills Gatorade because it tastes diluted and gross.
Rice University does not have a contract to sell bottled water.
Bottled Water Alternatives
Above are some great bottled water alternatives, if tap water is really that offensive. Reuse a Rice water
bottle (10 different kinds are available at the Rice Bookstore!), or use this water filling station. This
station's great because it shows you how many bottles are saved by refilling. Also, in every dorm and
servery, we have water purifiers that encourage students to refill instead of use plastic bottles.
Banning the Bottle
How to get rid of bottles:
1. Contact the Environmental Club and the SOCI 302 class to see if you can get help during the
project.
2. You can't tell Recharge U to simply stop selling one of their top brands, so you have to go to the
administration to ban the bottle.
3. Schedule a meeting time with President Leebron to discuss the negative impacts of bottled
water and why Rice should move away from it.
4. Create a petition to ban bottled water signed by students and staff at Rice.
5. Organize a Ban the Bottle rally at Rice to increase publicity.
6. Talk to the Head of Clubs and Events at Rice to discuss the lack of funding to clubs wishing to
buy bottled water.
7. Submit petition to President Leebron, the Department of Sustainability.
Potential challenges:
1. ReCharge U is an independent convenience store that uses Rice facilities and is not necessarily
under Rice jurisdiction as to sold commodities. It might be difficult to convince to stop selling
bottled water.
2. Because clubs are run by students and are hard to keep track of, they might buy bottled water
anyway or use personal funds to provide bottled water.
3. Scheduling time with such a busy university president may be difficult.
4. Gathering student interest may be difficult initially.
5. Convincing students and staff to halt their addiction to bottled water may be difficult and
unpopular.
6. Doing both this movement as a student and an environmental activist is time consuming and
difficult.
Current Student Initiatives
For the SOCI 302 class, Rice in the Future, is trying to get plastics and styrofoam banned from campus.
Ideally, if they can complete their goal in one semester, they want to ban the use of plastic water bottles
and styrofoam on campus. Also, since party cups are so commonly number 6 plastic, which isn't
recyclable in Houston, they are trying to reduce unrecyclable party cup usage by 25%. They will do so by
raising awareness about recyclables, conducting surveys about current student awareness, and
contacting food-distribution centers about the elimination of unrecyclable plastics! Additionally, our
college eco-reps are selling recyclable number 1 cups for 5 cents, as an alternative to the number 6 red
solo cups.
To further raise awareness about plastic use, students in this group are planning to collect bottles from
one week and create an art installation of all of the plastics we go through at Rice. The hope is that by
seeing the mass of our waste, students will think twice before opting for bottled water. If they need help,
I'm all for it!!!
Good news on GMOs in Mexico!
http://banoosh.com/blog/2013/10/22/huge-gmo-news/