Karyn Kaplan is a passionate person, especially when it comes to water.
Kaplan, the program manager for the University Recycling Program, has been working since May on the Free Bottled Water campaign, hoping to decrease the amount of bottled water students and faculty consume on campus and possibly proposing a campus-wide water bottle ban to completely stop the consumption.
This Thursday, the Campus Recycling Program, as part of the University’s Student Sustainability Coalition, will show the movie “TAPPED,” a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of the water bottle industry. Campus Recycling will table the event providing information regarding bottled water consumption on campus.
On Earth Day last spring, Kaplan said they held their first event for the Free Bottled Water campaign on campus. Kaplan and crew held a blind taste test and asked students to choose which water they preferred — tap or bottled.
“We ask them a couple of questions about their water consumption, ask them to sign a pledge to not buy bottled water again, and give them a free stainless-steel bottle,” Kaplan said. “This is just one small thing we can do to decrease our carbon footprint.”
Globally, the United States is the world’s leading consumer of bottled water. Americans drank 26 billion liters of bottled water in 2004, or approximately one 8-ounce glass per person every day. In a paper written by Food and Water Watch, a non-profit organization that works with grass-roots organizations to promote sustainable practices, the authors wrote that bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water, and that roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water.
More locally, in June 2007, Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed a revised state bottle bill that expanded the existing drink container deposit to cover bottled water containers, motivated by environmental harm from waste created by the product’s disposal.
“But the bottle bill doesn’t address the whole issue,” Kaplan said.
In 2007, Kaplan wrote a proposal to the University’s Environmental Issues Committee urging them to pressure the University to reduce its water consumption, and instead of answers, she got money. Kaplan used the money to install 10 refillable water bottle spigots — five in the EMU, and five scattered around campus — hoping she’d show students that they have other options.
“If we want to be truly sustainable, we have to do what we can with what we have,” Kaplan said. “Sustainability should be the rule, not the exception.”
Kaplan and the University Recycling Program started the Free Bottled Water campaign in May and are planning to hold more events like Thursday’s in the coming months.
“This is a growing sentiment within the environmental community at large,” said senior architecture student and Recycling Program member Tyler Polich . “I mean out of all the things that are frivolous expenses, bottled water makes a huge impact and it really needs to be addressed.”
For Polich, a campus ban for the University would cause a lot of heads to butt.
“A lot has to do with where the contracts lie with bottled water companies,” Polich said. “It’s a dilemma, and not an invested interest in this campus area.”
One of Kaplan’s biggest issues lies with University Catering and the catered events that supply bottled water.
“(The Recycling Program) would walk around after the event and find that most people would take a couple of sips from the bottled water and then recycle them,” Kaplan said.
“It takes a vast amount of energy to create (the bottles) that are just thrown away,” Polich said.
Food Services Director Tom Driscoll said there are pitchers of water at all catering events, and adding bottled water or other bottled beverages adds an additional cost.
University Catering’s average event calls for the Business Buffet, which includes water pitchers and an added amount of $1.25 per person for sodas and bottled water. If a campus bottle ban were to happen on campus, Driscoll said catering practices would not change, but Polich and Kaplan hope that students will change their own practices.
“Most students don’t know the impact they have by buying water,” Pollich said. “If they did, they wouldn’t buy bottled water.”
“The next war will be over water,” Kaplan said. “This isn’t fun and games, it’s a serious,
serious issue.”
AT A GLANCE
WHAT: Free, on-campus showing of “TAPPED,” a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of the water industry
WHO: University Student Sustainability Coalition
WHEN: 7 p.m. Nov. 19
WHERE: 177 Lawrence
Water Trends in the U. S.
Millions of gallons of bottled water consumed through water bottles since 2000:
2000 – 4,725.1
2001 – 5,185.3
2002 – 5,795.7
2003 – 6,269.8
2004 – 6,806.7
2005 – 7,538.9
2006 – 8,253.5
2007 – 8,757.4
2008 – 9,418.0 (preliminary)
[email protected]
Plastic bottles dead in the water?
Daily Emerald
November 15, 2009
0
More to Discover