To make Penn State a more sustainable university and community, we must ban the sale of single-use water bottles on Penn State campuses. We endorse a ban on the sale of individual single-use bottles purely containing flat, unflavored, and non-sparkling water, and in doing so, we ask that the Penn State Campus Sustainability Office adopt a policy banning the sale of such bottled water on campus. We ask that Penn State enact this policy against bottled water consumption in order to prevent the inherent wastefulness of purchasing and drinking bottled water. These single-use water bottles, often made from plastic, are often consumed individually; however, the collected practice of consuming these bottles creates an unnecessarily large burden on the environment and Penn State's attempts at recycling these bottles. In the pursuit of sustainable behavior and in accordance with Penn State's self-proclaimed goal make its campuses sustainable and fiscally efficient, we support a policy banning these bottled water sales. Penn State estimates that roughly 600 tons of plastic bottles do not undergo recycling processes at Penn State. The ending result is that, because of bottled water consumption, 600 tons of plastic each year arrive at a local landfill. According to the Solid Waste Association of North America, this plastic then requires thousands of years to decompose in a landfill environment. To protect our environment and limit the already rising growth in landfills, we must discourage wasteful practices by banning bottled water sales on campus. By signing this petition, we endorse a policy banning the sale of bottled water on Penn State campuses. This needed policy does not address other kinds of bottle consumption such as flavored water, soda, sparking water, carbonated water, and other beverages that do not purely contain water. A ban on the purchasing of single-use bottled water at Penn State campuses will help make Penn State a more environmentally friendly environment, and in enacting this policy, Penn State will have begun a proactive initiative aimed against wastefulness.

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