Why ban plastic water bottles? Bottled water costs around 500 times more than tap water and carries a high environmental cost too. Producing a one litre bottle itself uses up to seven litres of water as well as a quarter of a litre of oil. In the UK we throw away over 3 million plastic bottles every single day. Water bottles are made of PET plastic which takes 500 years to biodegrade and less than 10% are currently recycled. The production of water bottles uses 17 million barrels of oil a year! I support a Plastic Bottle Free Campus. This includes: • Providing more environmentally friendly means of drinking water on campus, through: • Increasing the proliferation of water fountains on campus. • Banning the sale of plastic water bottles. • Increasing the availability of paper cups to use the fountains, and the means to recycle them. • Increasing the sale of reusable water bottles on campus. • Providing incentives to promote the use of reusable water bottles.