Students Support Ban on Bottled Water

NewsJacob Roberts — Published April 4, 2011

TAPthirst, a student-run initiative dedicated to keeping water in the public domain, struck a victory in the recent election, with students voting in favour of the idea of banning bottled water on the Concordia campuses.

Laura Beach, a newly-elected Board of Governors’ student representative for Your Concordia, started the initiative in 2007 and has been working to get rid of bottled water on campus ever since.

“Water is a human and ecological right and has been acknowledged as such by the United Nations. Bottled water represents the commodification of this right. It’s [also] hugely energy-consumptive and waste-generative throughout its life cycle,” Beach said.

Concordia University recently renewed its contract with PepsiCo. Included in the contract is a clause that allows the VP Services at Concordia to remove bottled water from any location on campus that sells PepsiCo. products, including vending machines.

The question, asked at the polls in last week’s election, was simply a non-binding opinion poll. Both Beach and Michael Heinermann, co-coordinator of TAPthirst, though, are hopeful that the movement will go ahead as planned.

“This essential thing that we need to live is being privatized by people who, bottom line, only have one thing in mind: the dollar. To put a price on something that’s priceless doesn’t make sense,” Heinermann said.

Step by step, TAPthirst’s plan is to remove bottled water from Concordia, upgrade the water fountains around campus to facilitate filling reusable water bottles, make the fountains more visible around campus and continue to raise awareness in the student body about issues surrounding bottled water.

According to the Sustainable Concordia website, bottled water isn’t any healthier than tap water. The website also states that bottled water is often just packaged tap water, with the packaging and distribution taking an enormous environmental toll.