Mount Holyoke Campus Split On Potential Bottled Water Ban

By Ailsa Sachdev on December 14, 2012

Image via Flickr: Rubbermaid Products

At first glance, it may seem the water fountain is going the way of poodle skirts, vinyl records and pagers. However, the national “Think Outside The Bottle” campaign is a movement to encourage communities to go back to the tap. This cause, which was introduced to Mount Holyoke this fall, has sparked a heated debate on campus. The prospect of this ban becoming reality at Mount Holyoke was inspired by Hampshire College banning water bottles on campus in September. The “Think Outside The Bottle” campaign is trying to gather signatures from approximately half the student body in order to bring about similar legislation ending the sale of bottled water on campus.

The motivation is to spread the word that corporations have convinced the general public that tap water is not as safe as bottled water. According to a study conducted by Natural Resources Defense Council, at least a quarter of bottled water is filtered, municipal tap water. Pepsi’ Aquafina and Coca Cola’s Dasani have announced that their bottled water actually comes from tap water. Furthermore, this study found that 22 percent of bottled water contains chemical contaminants that are not present in tap water. This is because tap water is subjected to vigorous chemical testing that bottled water is not required to do. The goal of these tap water awareness organizations is to lift this marketing veil these major corporations have used to influence America’s water drinking culture.

Nevertheless, some students have strong reasons for not drinking tap water on campus. Michelle Lai ’14 drinks tap water at home in Ohio but drinks bottled water in Mount Holyoke because there is no water fountain or kitchenette on her floor. In addition, she takes hygiene into consideration, not of the water itself, but of the faucets. “One, there’s a girl on my floor who washes her feet in the bathroom sink with her feet touching the faucet so I don’t feel comfortable drinking her feet germs. Two, people’s toothbrushes touch the faucet all the time.” Aditi Sarkar ’14, who only drinks water from the kitchenette tap, adds that she would not drink water from the bathrooms if she did not have a kitchenette on her floor.

Therefore, Sarkar believes that it is a no-brainer for her, especially since she drinks a lot of water during the day. “If I only drank bottled water, I’d be spending ten dollars a day for water when I can get it for free. So what’s the point?”

For some students, the decision to drink tap water is an environmentally conscious one. Victoria Day’14, a Math and English double major, doesn’t notice a difference between tap and bottled water quality. However, what influences her decision is the unnecessary waste that comes from plastic materials piling up in landfills. Recently, this has become a local issue since Toxics Action Center rated South Hadley’s landfill the most polluted landfill site in New England. The coordinator for Mount Holyoke’s group of sustainability educators called Eco-Reps, Ariel Russ’13, says, “The students of Mount Holyoke need to understand that the fewer resources we use by drinking less bottled water and the more we recycle the bottles we use, the less waste we are creating. A concept as simple as minimizing is something we forget.”

On the other hand, Allison Fisher ’14, a “Think Outside the Bottle” member and environmental studies student, is tired of the unfairness in the bottled water industry. “It isn’t just the waste created from making and using plastic bottles, but the places the U.S. ships this waste so we as a country don’t have to deal with it.” While she acknowledges that not all tap water in the U.S. is safe to drink, she advocates for “investments that will improve public water systems and infrastructure so people in places with unsafe tap water can have access to something that is necessary to survive.”

Though this is a global issue, the “Think Outside The Bottle” campaign is trying to make an impact at a community-level with the support of college organizations across the country. Rebecca Neubardt ’13, the regional student coordinator and Mount Holyoke organizer of the Think Outside the Bottle campaign,  thinks that she can achieve her goal of 1,100 signatures, which is half of the student body, by the end of the year and thus impose a ban, “We have 800 signatures so far so only 300 more to go!”

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