The Boston University Environmental Student Organization campaigned against what they said are the negative side effects of bottled water with demonstrations in the George Sherman Union on Tuesday acknowledging of World Water Day.
About 40 students stopped by the Stone Science Building Lounge to participate in a blind taste test that asked students to drink two different cups water, labeled “X” and “Y,” and subsequently guess which was tap and which was bottled water.
“Water is one of the most important natural resources and humans can’t live without it,” said Meredith Withelder, College of Arts and Sciences junior and ESO president.
“I would choose tap water because bottled water has many negative impacts on the environment,” Withelder said. “The plastic produced every year is an incredible waste. Tap water is more than drinkable, especially here in Boston.”
World Water Day began in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, according to the World Water Day website. The day’s objective is to promote clean drinking water for citizens of every country, regardless of economic status.
Students also signed a petition promising to abstain from drinking bottled water because of its negative effects on the environment.
Nathan Phillips, a CAS professor in the Department of Geography and Environment, helped ESO organize the tasting.
“I’m satisfied with Boston’s water quality,” Phillips said. “I think it’s healthy and safe because I’ve seen test results from chemical testing. Having said that, I do identify with skepticism that we should trust that our municipal water is safe. We need to be involved and find out ourselves if we think water is safe to drink.”
However, Phillips said he agrees that bottled water is not harmful to the environment under certain conditions.
“I’m in favor of some diversity, which could include some bottled water. Reusable bottles are the way to go,” he said. “If there were bottled waters that were truly localized and bottled were reused, kind of like beer bottles in Amsterdam, then that could be good form of bottled water.”
Cutler Cleveland, the associate chairman of the Department of Geography and Environment, also helped coordinate with ESO, and agreed that the distinction between tap and bottled water is an important one.
“We all consume a lot of water and a lot of potential pollutants can be carried in water, so it’s important to know what’s going into your body,” Cleveland said.
Cleveland said chemicals released by combustion into the atmosphere and run-offs from parking lots and agricultural fields contribute to polluted water.
Students said that even though tap water and bottled water contain different levels of chemicals, it is difficult to determine the quantity of various pollutants by tasting alone.
CAS junior Rebecca Bar said she thought one of the cups of water had a distinct aftertaste and that she assumed this cup contained the tap water.
“They both just tasted like regular water,” said CAS junior Gabrielle Logan. “I usually drink tap water in my dorm, but if I can’t have tap water, I’ll just buy bottled. It’s only bad for the environment if you don’t recycle it.”
CAS junior Hila Landesman said that there is no guarantee plastic water bottles will be recycled.
“People take water for granted. Water is essential for life and we can’t live without it. We take for granted our connection to water and our impact on it,” she said.
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Buying bottled water and recycling the bottle after is still bad for the environment. It’s a ton of wasted energy on something that can easily be avoided by carrying a sturdy bottle around.
There is so much more to the debate on bottled water than simply its impact on the environment. Every time we drink bottled water, we are allowing large corporations to take control of access to a basic human right. If we continue to live this way, we are going to see the development of a ‘haves vs. have nots’ situation, which is already present in many developing countries where water privatization has taken over. We need to turn toward investing in infrastructure in order to insure the high quality of tap water. And, as the above comment points out, bottling water is an extremely inefficient, energy intensive process.
For more on this issue, there are a lot of great documentaries out there, ‘Flow’ and ‘Tapped’ among them. Happy World Water Day!