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What do reusable bottles have to do with the flu? These days, everything seems to be peripherally related to flu, but aside from that, a Baxter Bulletin article yesterday reports that one principal is attributing low absenteeism rates with the use of reusable bottles.
Principal Randi Connior of Yellville-Summit Elementary in Arkansas noted that only 4% of her students were absent on Tuesday. Many districts are reporting absentee rates of 14-20% and higher. Every student at her elementary school has a reusable water bottle so students don’t have to use the water fountains in the hallways. “If you’ve ever watched kids drink from a school fountain,” she said, “you’ll usually see them sucking on it.” Students have been issued a reusable water bottle every year since principal Connior noticed a drop in absenteeism during a boil-water advisory when the water fountains were not being used.
When I searched “school water fountain hygiene” on-line, I found out that there are plenty of schools who have zeroed in on water fountains as a likely culprit for spreading contagious disease. In Charlestown, West Virginia, some Kanawha elementary principals have called school health officials about banning water fountain use as a way to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus according to a Charleston Gazette article.
In their guide to avoiding infections when returing to schools this fall, the National Jewish Health website explicitly warns: “Water fountains can be the enemy. Take a reusable water bottle to school, instead of using the school water fountain, which may become contaminated with germs, especially during cold and flu season.”
I’m heartened to find that the solution of choice is reusable bottles, a very eco-friendly response, rather bottled water with all its associated wastefulness. Custom reusable bottles are readily available for bulk purchase with a quick turnaround time from Back2Tap for any school or parent group who would like to take this step toward keeping children healthy as this perilous flu season gets underway.
The future of tap water is looking better all the time. After decades of continually eroding enforcement of the Clean Water Act, the EPA is pledging to turn the agency around. Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA announced that the EPA has drawn up an action plan that includes better enforcement, better oversight of states, and more transparency and accountability. While development of this plan began in July 2009, the Toxic Waters series in the New York Times has certainly galvanized the public and congressional leaders in support of this effort.
This is fantastic news for anyone concerned about the quality of our drinking water. The last thing we want to do is end up relying on bottled water for drinking. While only a small percentage of households on public water systems receive water from systems that have experienced health-based violations, it is unacceptable that anyone in the USA should have unsafe tap water come out of their faucets at home on any occasion.
- A soccer player with one of our bottles
Did you know that Americans each drank an average of 218 bottles of water in 2007? bottles – 66 billion, in fact! Only 23% of them are recycled so on a daily basis, a staggering 140 million disposable plastic bottles go to landfills in the USA. That’s enough, laid end to end, to reach from New Jersey to China and back every day.
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- A soccer player with one of our bottles
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- bottled water bottles laid end to end from Xhina to the US
It doesn’t take an engineering degree to understand that this is a problem. It is extremely wasteful. To begin with, finite natural resources like water and oil are being consumed in the manufacturing of bottled water. It takes 4 ounces of oil and 51 ounces of water to make one 17 ounce bottle of water! Then after their use, 50 billion disposable plastic water bottles are dumped in landfills each year where they will take over 700 years to decompose.
There is a simple solution to this problem. Drink tap water instead of bottled water and use a reusable bottle when you are on-the-go. Even if you filter and flavor your tap water, you will save money because bottled water is 1000 times more expensive than tap water. There are many reusable bottles on the market today. For a high performance, high quality water bottle, try a stainless steel bottle from Back2Tap.
When the Patriots Path Council called to invite Back2Tap to their Jamboree celebrating 100 years of Boy Scouts, I didn’t really know what to expect. Preparing for the “jambo,” I began to wonder whether any boys would visit a table presenting the evils of bottled water when they could be spear throwing, mountain boarding, bullwhip cracking, or watching an army tank run over a car.
In spite of having about 175 cool activities to choose from, a couple hundred of the 4300 scouts and leaders did find time to spend at the Back2Tap table this past Saturday. Every single boy and leader listened intently, asked questions, and seemed genuinely excited about our campaign for getting back to drinking tap water and using reusable bottles. This was definitely the best crowd I’ve ever worked with as an exhibitor. I also learned a lot – from the challenges of having private well water to the best type of carabiner.
Interestingly, even these outdoorsy community-minded folks who had reusable bottles clipped to their belts weren’t familiar with the astounding facts about bottled water waste. Many of them told us that if people knew about the:
• 140 million disposable bottles going to landfills everyday,
• 700 years it takes for plastic to decompose,
• 4 ounces of oil it takes to make each disposable bottle,
• 1000 times greater cost of bottled water, and
• more stringent regulatory oversight of tap water compared to bottled water,
they would be persuaded to drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water. Most people just don’t know about the hidden costs of their consumer choices. To illustrate these impacts, we had a sequencing activity where scouts put the 18 steps in the Life Cycle of a Disposable Plastic Water Bottle in order (see photo). Impacts on the environment were obvious at many steps in the Life Cycle. Before leaving, they were also able to take our Bottled Water IQ Test to see how much they had learned.
Obviously, there is a lot more work to do getting these facts and concepts out to people. Most of the scouts and scout leaders left our exhibit table eager to spread the Back2Tap message with the rest of their troop and with their communities. This is exactly the type of help the Back2Tap movement needs because it is not a message that large multi-national corporations with large advertising budgets is going to sponsor. It will take community leaders like scouts, teachers, PTO members, municipal volunteers, and green activists spreading the word, community by community. To find out how to help foster the Back2Tap movement, visit our community page.
Congratulations to the Patriots Path Council and the participating scout troops for organizing such an exciting and inspiring event. It was an honor to meet and talk with so many of you – thank you for sharing your opinions and suggestions with Back2Tap.
The New York Times series “Toxic Waters” written by Charles Duhigg presents a disturbing view of our drinking water quality in the USA. The first article about herbicides (atrazine in particular) points out that it is time to strengthen some of the federal drinking water standards in light of new research. You can read more about it in my earlier Earthsense blog entitled “Don’t give up on tap water.” The second article in this series is about industrial waste, particularly in the coal-mining region of West Virginia. Basically, Duhigg says the 1972 Clean Water Act was largely successful at stopping the rampant pollution of our rivers, lakes, and streams, but over the last 10 years it has not been well enforced by the EPA or states. Consequently, our water quality is going downhill again. His third article is about agricultural runoff which is a type of non-point source pollution (it doesn’t come out of a pipe). Most of this runoff is not regulated by the Federal government, and it is not well regulated by local governments. Disposing of huge quantities of manure by spraying it on nearby fields has led to bacteria and parasites in local water bodies and drinking water wells in heavily agricultural areas.
Before you panic and revert to bottled water, you might want to follow the advice of the New York Times on-line article “How safe is your tap water?“ First visit the EPA drinking water quality reports that are available on-line to check out the quality of water in your town. Then, find out the names of the polluters that are located near you, by visiting the interactive database of water pollution records for the United States that was amassed by The New York Times. If you are one of the small percentage of people who have impaired drinking water from your private well or your public water system, your next best step would be to use some sort water filtration at home while you lobby your legislators for cleaner water. Don’t assume that bottled water is any safer, by the way. It is regulated by the FDA, an even more poorly funded and staffed governmental agency.
There is a positive side to the story. The EPA reports that 92% of the population served by community water systems had no reported health-based violations. There’s also hope that investigative articles like these will pressure the EPA and states to improve enforcement of the Clean Water Act laws that were wisely enacted to protect us all those years ago. Finally, Lisa Jackson, the new head of EPA has acknowledged these problems and says she will address them. The more people who raise these issues with regulators and politicians, the better chance we have of achieving meaningful improvements so that everybody in the United States will be able to drink their tap water and enjoy recreation in our water bodies without fear of getting sick.
1 Billion. That is the number of disposable plastic bottles that could be kept out of landfills every year if just 10% of the students in the US, K-12, would switch to reusable bottles. This number is hard to believe and hard to visualize, but we’ve crunched the numbers and it’s true. The solution to this staggering amount of plastic waste is to reuse. By getting your children’s school to promote reusable bottles, you can help them “Join the Reusolution” and save that billion bottles.
Eliminating 10% of the disposable plastic bottles used by school children would also save 31 million gallons of oil, almost 400 million gallons of water, and 12 billion balloons worth (or 120 billion grams) of CO2 each year. The resources it takes to make these bottles is surprising, especially when you add them all up.
Collectively, parents would save over $25 million dollars in the first year by switching to tap water-based drinks from single serving drinks in disposable plastic bottles. This more than justifies the purchase of good quality reusable bottles.
To foster completely litter-less lunches, Back2Tap is offering reusable sandwich wraps and snack bags as well as custom-logoed stainless steel bottles for your school’s green fundraiser this year. Save money, save the planet - Join the Reusolution!
OK, I haven’t seen the movie “The Age of Stupid” yet, and from the looks of it, it won’t be easy to find it in a theatre nearby for quite a while, if ever. There are so many interesting eco-films out there that never come to a theatre near me. What’s up with that? In this day and age, it seems downright ridiculous and wrong to drive 45 minutes on a highway to see a movie, especially a green flick!
I’ve read three reviews of this movie so far this week: one says it’s overboard gloomy, one says it’s a wake up call, and one reports that it has already inspired a huge greenhouse gas reduction campaign in Great Britain called 10:10 (reduce emissions by 10% by 2010 – that would be in a few months!).
As a co-founder of Back2Tap, I figure I’ve got to see “The Age of Stupid” because it rails on people who think they are green simply because they recycle their disposable plastic bottles. The movie makes the point that it isn’t going to be as simple as recycling more or buying organic. We’re going to have to “reinvent” the way we live in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Thankfully, there is one lifestyle change we can all make without much effort – the way we drink water and use disposable plastic bottles. Tap water takes 800 times less energy to deliver than bottled water according to “The Age of Stupid.” We can all drink tap water from reusable bottles instead of bottled water and significantly reduce our waste of resources and carbon footprint. That is the primary message Back2Tap shares with schools, groups, and anyone who will listen. Join our Reusolution!
This is just wrong!
Many school fountains are in a state of disrepair.
During our 2007 Back2Tap reusable bottle campaign in our school district, we toured several of our schools to investigate the status of the school water fountains. It was shocking to find out that there is no access to tap water in some lunch rooms and numerous old water fountains in the hallways had been disabled. The perception seemed to be that they didn’t need to be fixed because students could rely on bottled water. Also, the school district makes money by selling bottled water in the cafeteria.
These images are from a Polaris Institute report on water fountains in Canadian universities: Campus Water Fountains: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but they could have been from just about any US school district.
We did a beverage survey and found out that 80% of the bottled water being consumed was coming from home. The school district didn’t stand to lose very much revenue if bottled water sales dropped, and parents stood to save money by not having to purchase bottled water. Two of our district schools were thrilled to use the funds raised by our stainless steel bottle fundraiser to purchase and install three school water coolers. Two other schools are likely to follow suit.
Back2Tap is working to replicate this model in other school districts by helping schools sell reusable stainless steel water bottles to raise money for point-of-use water coolers in school cafeterias and hallways. This is one good way to combat the trend toward limited access to drinking water in our communities.
Here is a win-win: invest in green jobs and upgrade our water infrastructure (the water lines and treatment facilities). Looking For a Green Job? Grab Your Rain Boots explains that about $6 billion of the stimulus package money is targeted for water projects. This is good for the economy in the short term because it will employ people and good for our pocketbooks in the long run because it will keep the cost of our drinking water down. The alternative, bottled water, costs as much as 1000 times more than tap water! Americans spent $66 billion on bottled water in 2007. This prudent investment in local water-related projects is urgently needed to maintain the quality of our tap water.
Can you imagine a day when we have to buy bottled water because our water lines are too leaky, our water plants are too outdated to provide clean drinking water, and our sewage isn’t treated thoroughly before being discharged to our rivers, lakes, and oceans? We’re going to end up there if we don’t invest this money and even more in our water infrastructure. Look what happened in New Orleans when they didn’t upgrade the levees that engineers said were inadequate? Global warming was not the primary cause of the Katrina catastrophe; lack of investment to upgrade the levees allowed them to be breached and the city to be flooded so badly. It was a man-made disaster. Let’s listen to what the engineers are saying about our water systems!
In the long run, these water-related projects will be a lot cheaper and less wasteful than relying on bottled water for our drinking water needs. These are green jobs we’ll be drinking to in the future!
Many consumers feel that the price of bottled water is worth the convenience that the bottles provide. The fact of the matter is that the price of a single 18 ounce bottle of water is enough to buy 100 gallons of tap water. That takes care of the price factor. In an effort to counteract the convenience factor of bottled water, Back2Tap offers customizable and reusable stainless steel water bottles. With the price and convenience factors of bottled water now in perspective, you do the math… Is bottled water really as convenient as it used to seem?
