Petition to ban all plastic water bottles on campus

2014.11.12

Ethan Daniels

Plastic water bottles are ugly, bad for your health; most importantly pollute the campus and the environment around it. It is proven that drinking out of any sort of plastic, BPA free or not, is bad for your health. There is a very easy way to fix this issue; I proclaim that we must ban all plastic water bottles on campus, sold by commons and vending machines. This solution comes with a couple constraints and I am aware of them, but there are some incentives to convince the naysayers. First, every student will receive an aluminum water bottle from the university, branded with the university seal. To make sure students use these water bottles, and don’t get rid of them, students will receive a merit point at the end of year with proof of using/keeping it. You may think that this will be very expensive for the university to provide these aluminum bottles to every student but, to make 1,200 of these, the size of an average grade, it costs $6.42 per bottle. Second, when a student collects 15 plastic water bottles and turns them into a designated recycling center on campus he/she will receive $5 hawk dollars. Third, every student who buys/rents a micro fridge will get a free Brita water filter to fill the water bottle in their dorm rooms. We can look to UVM as an example of how to implement this solution. This change is a necessity, it will be a great way to keep the campus beautiful, protect the environment, and keep our students healthy.