Bottled+Water

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Resolution Regarding =  Bottled Water Initiative on WWU Campus   = =    =     Date :

Whereas, the Bottled Water Initiative is an effort to be more sustainable and encourage equal access to quality water on campus.

Whereas, the students of Western Washington University believe the right to quality clean water is a basic human right, and that bottled water is a step towards taking away this right as it privatizes water, which moves water from a basic right to a privilege.

Whereas, the Bottled Water Initiative will end the sale and distribution of bottled water on campus and bottled water will not be provided at any University events nor will University funds be used to purchase bottled water.

Whereas, in place of bottled water, vendors and campus events will offer ice (when available) and tap water as a basic service to the Western community, and future actions by Western regarding the quality of drinking water on campus will be directed at improving quality for all.

Whereas, exceptions will be made in event of emergencies where substantial fear of water contamination or campus security exists.

Therefore be it resolved that by supporting the Bottled Water Initiative, the students of WWU are voting to end the purchase, sale, and distribution of bottled water on campus, the use of WWU funds to purchase bottled water, and further support action which improves access and quality of water for the campus community.

Be it resolved that this resolution will be put forth before the student body during the 2008 AS elections, 4/28/08 at 12:01am to 5/2/08 at 2:00pm.

Attest:_ __Date___ Signature

Title

= Wording for Bottled Water Referendum =

Shall there be an end to the purchase, sale, and distribution of bottled water on campus with the following conditions: • Bottled Water will not be available for sale or distribution on campus. • Bottled Water will not be provided at any University events nor can University funds be used to purchase bottled water. • Vendors will offer ice (when available) and tap water as a basic service to the Western community (or …ice and tap water as a basic service to any Western community member with a water bottle). • Future actions by Western regarding the quality of drinking water on campus will be directed at improving drinking water quality for all. • Exceptions will be made in event of emergencies where substantial fear of water contamination or campus security exists.

= Letters to the Editor  = A Very Rough Draft Copy

Bottled Water and the Future of Society
Every person in this wants quality clean water. I believe every person has the right to clean water. It is up to us to maintain this right. Bottled Water is the privatization of water. As we put a price on the consumption of water we must consider its consequences. I believe the right to quality clean water is a basic human right, and that bottled water is a step towards taking away this right as it privatizes water, which moves water from a basic right to a privilege. Tap Water to drink in New York City costs $.49 of one year of eight glasses a day eight days a week. Even cheap bottled water costs $1,400 for a year. In total Americans spend $17 billion on bottled water every year. As water becomes a privatized it becomes a class issue. Often the community where the water comes from doesn’t have universal access to the quality water. For example, Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water. Bottled Water has a negative and completely unnecessary impact on the environment. Every year Americans consume over 50 billion plastic bottles. Less than 20 % of those are recycled. It takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the plastic for the bottles in the US, which is enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year. The energy used in creating bottled water is enough to power 190,000 homes for a year. Bottled water involves unnecessary transportation. Here our Western, our water travels less than four miles to our tap from Lake Whatcom. Bottled water travels hundreds of miles to us. This inefficient and extravagant travel leads to more pollution and the release of carbon. More importantly, lets bring it to a personal level. Do you recycle every one of your plastic bottles, aluminum cans, or glass bottles you buy? If not why are we consuming and then forever disposing of finite resources? I’ve been to places where the streams are still clean and one can drink the water without purifying it. It is incredible. World-wide water quality is still digressing. Recent studies have come out talking about how pharmaceuticals are appearing in our water. Medicines that pass through our bodies and into water are ending up in our city drinking water, alpine lakes in Switzerland, Yosemite, aquifers, and even bottled water. The only process that removes the pharmaceuticals is reverse osmosis. Not only is this expensive, for every galloon of purified wastewater in reverse osmosis there is about four galloons of wastewater which now has a greater concentration of wastes. At one point the solution to pollution may have been dilution but this is no longer the case. A bottled water CEO once told me in regards to tap water, “I won’t drink that stuff, its terrible. That’s why I make bottled water, it’s for people’s health. I am a health guy.” Beyond creating a solution to ‘dirty’ water that only benefits those who can afford it, bottled water gives off a false image of health. The FDA which regulates bottled water has stated, “Companies that market bottled water as safer than tap water are defrauding the American Public.” Standards for bottle water are not stricter than tap and many bottled waters are simply bottled tap. Many public water have pipes that can corrode. This is a problem. Bottled water comes in #1 plastic which leech plasticizers. The long-term effects of exposure to plastics and their plasticizers are largely unknown although few people would argue they are not detrimental to our health. People buy bottled water for convenience. How much do you pay for bottled water, $1? How much do you earn? If you earn $10 an hour you are working 6 minutes to get that bottle. How long would it have taken you to fill a water bottle? As the Byrds said, “there is a time” for everything. Convenience is nice, but we don’t need convenience when it costs us more of our time than it saves, or is slowly hurting our environment, and causes other people to not have what we all want. It’s important to remember the humanity behind bottled water. Nearly every one of us drinks or has drunk bottled water. Western has an alumnus Doug MacLean who is the Founder and CEO of Talking Rain bottled water. On campus his Viking Rain Water funds four athletic scholarships. His son is a Western graduate and his daughter currently attends. We as bottled water consumers or CEOs are still good people. This does not mean bottled water is a good thing. The question of bottled water is connected to something much deeper. Around the world we continue to use finite resources as if they were infinite. It is truly a flaw of our current culture/economic system that nothing has value until it is abused and there isn’t enough of it. Water won’t be a truly valuable resource until there isn’t enough clean water. Farmers won’t make a worthy income until we can’t grow enough food. Oil and metals won’t be ‘precious’ until there isn’t enough of them to continue the lifestyles we have today. As food, water, and resources we all have grown accustomed to grow scarce it is those who have less who will suffer first. Ultimately we all suffer this tragedy of the commons. The problems we face today are greater than ourselves. By drinking bottled water we become part of the problem. The current tap water system in America may not be the answer either. We can all be part of the solution and work to meet everyone’s needs for safe water. By not drinking bottled water, standing togheter and working for cleaner, healthier water future is where we must be. When we separate ourselves to meet our needs, with some people drinking water in bottles, some saying home bought filters are good, some drinking tap, we are destined to fail. We as the water drinkers of the world must join together and demand a quality, sustainable water system for all. As someone once said, United we stand, divided we fall. We all have needs for clean-water, safety, and security. The answer is not bottled water. Yet things cannot remain as they are. We must change. We must control what ends up in our water stream, increase drinking water quality, and ensure water equality for all. If you truly care about your safety and/or that of others, work to improve water quality for everyone. If you care but don’t want to do anything, keep drinking your tap water. Please don’t drink bottled water. It only builds the problems we face.

United we stand, divided we fall – Asops Fable

“United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”

Bottled Water is a microcosm of the problem of our society. Everytime we build roads, drive our cars, print papers for class, eat food with copious amounts of pesticides, treat each other without respect, etc. We are supporting...

= Justification =

Americans and Bottled Water = 1.5 million barrels of oil Americans spend $17 billion bottled water Privatization of Water

Studies show consistently that tap water is purer than many bottled waters—not including those that contain only tap water, which by some estimates is 40% of the total by volume

Water 8 oz 8 times a day for a year is $.49 w/ tap vs $1400 w/ even cheap bottled water.

40% of bottled water from municipal taps, other bottled water drains aquifers

We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year -- in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic and the use of 1.5 million barrels of oil.

By volume, bottled water often costs 1,000 times the price of tap water –

Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.

8 out of 10 plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or end up in a landfill. (Container Recycling Institute) 1/3 of 1% of landfills have bottled water.

In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

At the height of Perrier's popularity, Bruce Nevins was asked on a live network radio show one morning to pick Perrier from a lineup of seven carbonated waters served in paper cups. It took him five tries.

The energy we waste using bottled water would be enough to power 190,000 homes. But refilling your water bottle from the tap requires no expenditure of energy, and zero waste of resources. (PBS Point of View 2004) Making all of the bottles for the US requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually. That's enough to fuel 100,000 cars. (Earth Policy Institute)

8 out of 10 plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or end up in a landfill. (Container Recycling Institute) The FDA which regulates bottled water, states that “Companies that market bottled water as being safer than tap water are defrauding the American Public.”

Last year, Americans threw away 38 billion plastic water bottles, about $1 billion worth of plastic1. That's a huge waste, especially considering 1.5 million barrels of oil - enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year - were used to produce the bottles2. And that's not even including the oil used for transportation.

0. Last year, the average American used 167 disposable water bottles, but only recycled 383..

1 Arnold, Emily, and Janet Larsen. "Bottled Water: Pouring Resources Down the Drain ." Earth Policy Institute. 2 Feb. 2006. 28 June 2007. 2 "Not Disposable Anymore." P.O.V.'s Borders. 2004. PBS. 3 Fishman, Charles. "Message in a Bottle." Fast Company Magazine July 2007: 110. 4 This cost assumes the purchase of a $25 pitcher (one filter included), plus 5 replacement filters at $9 each, for a total yearly cost of $70, or $0.19 cents a day. 5 Each filter produces 40 gallons of water and the average Brita owner uses 6 filters in a year, to produce 240 gallons, or 30,720 ounces, of fresh-filtered water. 30,720 ounces is equivalent to the water found in 1,818 16.9-ounce water bottles. 6 Purchasing 1,818 16.9-ounce water bottles at the cost of $1 each costs $1,818. Over the course of a year, that's $4.98 a day. 7 Burros, Marian. "Fighting the Tide, a Few Restaurants Tilt to Tap Water." The New York Times [New York City, NY] 30 May 2007: Section F, Page 1 Water 8 oz 8 times a day for a year is $.49 w/ tap vs $1400 w/ even cheap bottled water.

At the height of Perrier's popularity, Bruce Nevins was asked on a live network radio show one morning to pick Perrier from a lineup of seven carbonated waters served in paper cups. It took him five tries.

The FDA which regulates bottled water, states that “Companies that market bottled water as being safer than tap water are defrauding the American Public.

Americans spend $17 on billion bottled water

Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.

8 out of 10 plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or end up in a landfill. (Container Recycling Institute) 1/3 of 1% of landfills have bottled water. Last year, Americans threw away 38 billion plastic water bottles, about $1 billion worth of plastic1. That's a huge waste, especially considering 1.5 million barrels of oil - enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year - were used to produce the bottles2. And that's not even including the oil used for transportation. The energy we waste using bottled water would be enough to power 190,000 homes. But refilling your water bottle from the tap requires no expenditure of energy, and zero waste of resources. (PBS Point of View 2004) Studies consistently show that tap water is purer than many bottled waters. 40% of bottled water from municipal taps, other bottled water drains aquifers and local water supplies

=Cartoons=