Candidly Canada: Bottle-free campus furthers sustainability efforts

Despite the gloomy weather, my Canadian host campus is shedding light on important environmental issues. Southern neighbors,
take note.Bishop’s University is the first university in Quebec to ban the sale of plastic water bottles. An on-campus effort called the Sustainable Development Action Group implemented this campaign in 2010.

For people concerned about water quality, drinking plastic bottled water isn’t reassuring and potentially less safe than local sources. According to the University of Toronto, tap water is regulated provincially and municipally. The same policy applies in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) protects tap water, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protects bottled water. The EPA requires multiple daily tests for bacteria in local tap water and makes results readily available to the public. The FDA however, only requires weekly testing and doesn’t share its findings with the EPA or the public.

According to Ban the Bottle, a widespread campaign devoted to this cause, 24 percent of bottled water sold is either Pepsi’s Aquafina or Coke’s Dasani. Both brands are bottled, purified municipal water. There’s no difference.From a sustainability standpoint, plastic water bottles have damaging effects on the environment because most of the plastics used not fully recyclable. Last year, according to the National Resources Defense Council, the average American used 167 disposable water bottles, but only recycled 38. Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. However, the U.S. recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent, which means 38 billion water bottles – more than $1 billion worth of plastic – are wasted each year.

Not only does “banning the bottle” benefit the environment through conserved energy and less waste, but consumers save money.Rather than buying plastic water bottles, let’s work toward improving water sources and purification even more.Clean water is a basic human right, not a product to buy and sell.

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