The Water Bottle Ban Makes Sense
The reason that bottled water is singled out amongst all beverages sold on campus is simple: because it is the only drink that is freely available right next to where you are buying it.
The truth is that we here in Canada benefit from having some of the highest quality water on Earth, freely available to us practically everywhere. A process designed to bottle water, which is too often of even lesser quality than what you get out of your tap, and then to transport it worldwide and resell it to us is nearly criminal in it’s wastefulness and an affront to the basic democratic right to potable water we rejoice in here.
We should be pressuring the university administration to not only ban bottled water, but more importantly to construct accessible water fountains all over campus to ensure all students ubiquitous access to water at all times, while also producing the least waste possible.
I agree with a principled stand against excessive packaging of all kinds, including the other drinks sold on campus. However, until orange juice and Coca-Cola are coming free out of the walls around me, I just don’t think there is as strong an argument for it.
Every step of the process surrounding the life cycle of bottled water on our campus is not only a wasteful use of both hydrocarbons and manpower, but also completely unnecessary.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 04, published September 7, 2010.
