"At University of Vermont, no admission for bottled water" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff, February 15, 2013
BURLINGTON, Vt. — On the University of Vermont campus, where nature seems to beckon from everywhere, bottled water has been unceremoniously lumped with the likes of sugar-laced Twinkies.
It’s not that water is bad for us; it’s that water bottles, from manufacture to disposal, are bad for the environment, activists say.
Beginning Jan. 1, plain bottled water cannot be purchased or served on this 460-acre campus. Not in the dining halls, cafes, or vending machines. Not at sporting events. Not even at catered meals for visiting scholars.
UVM is the first public university in New England to enact such a ban. Students are quickly becoming better acquainted with the school’s 215 drinking fountains, where water from Lake Champlain is piped free to thirsty students and into personal, reusable bottles dangling from thousands of backpacks.
I don't trust any water, but I often wonder how much the chlorine is hiring bacteria, drugs, and such from the public well.
“I’m fine with it being totally banned,” said Jordan Hurley, 22, a senior from Billerica, Mass. “I just feel like it’s better for the Earth and for everyone. Why should they make water a commodity when it’s free?”
But not everyone on campus sees the ban of bottled water — and its petroleum-linked plastic containers — in overarching, save-the-planet terms.
(Blog editor saddens at how inculcated and indoctrinated are the poor kids)
Water, after all, is considered healthier than a soft drink. To Erica Spiegel, the university’s waste and recycling manager, “it’s less about banning this product and more about publicly available water supplies.”
All around this campus, the fifth-oldest in New England, a stream of students makes its way to metal oases that once were called bubblers but now bear the dry, bureaucratic label of “water bottle refill stations.”
Where students and faculty once needed to bend if they wanted a mouthful of tap water, they now can press thermos-size containers under a retrofitted, gooseneck spigot.
“Why are we trucking it in from somewhere else?” asked Gioia Thompson, director of the university’s Office of Sustainability. “There was just this feeling: Why are we doing this? It makes no sense.”
But even Thompson, whose job revolves around green issues, was puzzled when students took on bottled water about five years ago. “A key question was, why water and not everything else in plastic,” Thompson said. “You’re going to take away the healthiest option.”
The move to ban bottled water is growing nationally, propelled by concerns about the use of fossil fuels to manufacture and transport the plastic containers....
That's bull. We have so many industries dependent on trucking, which was the way the lords and masters wanted it. That's why rail was neglected, and why globali$m was encouraged..
The Town of Concord, Mass., prohibited its sale in what is believed to be a municipal first in the United States.
See: Sunday Globe Special: Concord Thirst Has Been Slaked
As long as it isn't shit water.
At the University of Vermont, students lobbied administrators but also had to work against the interests of Coca-Cola....
Coke has provided bottled water under an exclusive, 10-year contract that ended in 2012. In exchange for “pouring rights,” Coca-Cola funneled $500,000 a year to the university for programs ranging from student aid to academics to athletics....
Ungrateful kids!
Being inconvenienced also stoked skepticism among wary students: “What if I forget my water bottle? What if the water stations don’t work,” Ilana Copel, 21, a senior from Yorktown, N.Y., and co- president of the environmental group Vermont Students Toward Environmental Protection, recalled....
Then I guess you will have to wait a bit.
The ban, however, comes with a cost....
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! They never tell you that up front when they are gleefully pushing the guilt trip to advance the agenda!
But....
Still....
Not good words for a report, or so my college writing instructor told us.
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