Trying to stay hydrated, but missing a reusable bottle? Don’t worry! Visit the Valley Library or West Dining Hall to “Adopt” a sanitized reusable bottle for FREE thanks to the Fresh From the Faucet 2016-2017 Adopt-a-Bottle campaign. Fresh From the Faucet is a student-led initiative on the Oregon State University main campus that focuses on increasing the use of reusable water bottles and consumption of tap water while decreasing the use of bottled water and sugary beverages. The Fresh From the Faucet committee, resulting from collaboration of the Student Sustainability Initiative, Nutrition and Dietetics Club, UHDS, and OSU Surplus, is kicking off the Adopt-a-Bottle campaign that will serve the community while addressing components of a healthy and sustainable lifestyle from individual, local, and global scales.
Adopt-a-Bottle is a new movement at OSU with goals to rescue and recirculate reusable bottles that turn up in lost and found locations throughout campus that are never claimed. Reusable water bottles that are not claimed are held at the OSUsed Store for 30 days and are then made available for resale and some are donated to the Adopt-a-Bottle program [1]. The bottles are then sanitized in a commercial dishwasher by UHDS employees. Once the bottles are sanitized they are sealed with Adopt-a-Bottle labels to identify them as official Adopt-a-Bottles ready to be adopted and put back to use!
This year, the Adopt-a-Bottle program is working towards implementing the same basic model of reducing waste and recycling items that the OSUsed Store encompasses, but with increased accessibility by having the bottles at shelved stations available for FREE in heavily trafficked areas on campus such as the Valley Library (pictured right) and
West Dining Hall (pictured below).
Designated Adopt-a-Bottle stations will be stocked with sanitized bottles for anyone to grab at no charge in order to cater towards students and staff that are in need of a reusable water bottle in effort to popularize the social, economic, and environmental benefits of refilling a reusable water bottle with filtered tap water.
Why is filling up from the tap a more economically viable option? If you were to drink the recommended eight glasses of water a day you could easily be spending up to $1,400 annually, while refilling the same volume at U.S. tap rates would equal less than $0.50 per year [2]. We are fortunate to have an abundance of EPA regulated and filtered tap water for our consumption. Check out the 2016 Corvallis Water Quality Report here if you would like to get more information about the sources and safety of the municipal tap water [3].
Unfortunately, the recycle rate in the United States is only 23% so using plastic bottles contributes to the accumulation of non-biodegradable waste in both our oceans and landfills [2]. Tap water is more environmentally responsible because it requires far less resources. Filling up from a faucet does not create the necessary water pollution, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions that bottled water does through methods of extraction of nonrenewable resources, bottle manufacturing, and the distribution of bottles across the globe. With colleges and universities responsible for consuming more plastic water bottles than many other organizations annually students at Oregon State University, and across the nation, have stepped up to discourage the habit of using bottled beverages [2].
Oregon State University prides itself being an institution that is conscious about sustainability and an institution that educates the community about steps that can be made in order to relieve the planet from unnecessary harm. The Adopt-a-Bottle program aims to promote the use of tap water rather than bottled beverages because tap water is accessible, free, and healthy and reusable bottles consume less resources and pollute less over their lives than single use disposable beverages.
Blog post written by Emily Cruse, Fresh From the Faucet intern.
[1] OSUsed Store http://surplus.oregonstate.edu/surplus/public-sales/osused-store
[2] Ban The Bottle https://www.banthebottle.net/
[3] 2016 Corvallis Water Quality Report http://www.corvallisoregon.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=10173
CATEGORIES: Campus Sustainability Student Sustainability Initiative Water