The Ban Bottled Water Campaign is student-led movement to try to get bottled water banned from Washtenaw Community College. If this campaign is successful, we will move to Eastern Michigan University, and perhaps other colleges and continue fighting. Below, I have explained my plea to help convince you otherwise as to why this is something that should be taken into your consideration. We are asking for "one-time use" bottled water to be banned from sales at WCC with incentives pushed to make other plastic products to be less desirable, more drip down drinking fountains, tax hikes of plastic products, easier access to BPA-free bottles for sale on campus, and other related solutions to this problem. With enough support, they, the WCC Board of Trustees and the President of WCC, will not be able to ignore us any longer. Help make the bottling corporations pay for what they have done.

Bottled water can be very deceiving. In terms of monetary cost, health, and the environmental degradation, bottled water does not benefit you, and the world around you in the slightest.

To start with cost, I will go through some basic math on the situation. The average cost of tap water is about (according to averages of estimates on various websites) $1.60/gallon. Let's say you pay $2.00 (x) for a bottle of water, which is roughly 16.9 ounces, so $2.00/oz. There is 128 ounces in a gallon, 128 oz/gal. Using unit cancellation and multiplying these two figures, you end up with about $15.15 per gallon! That's almost 950 times more expensive than gasoline! At least at today's prices. And you can make this calculation for any price you pay for bottled water; just simply input your dollar amount and leave everything else alone. It's honestly quite ridiculous how much these companies charge for something that they have admitted is just tap water anyways. And if you didn't know that fact, then yeah, a good majority of these companies have admitted that they basically just bottle tap water. Here's a good example: Pepsi/Aquafina Admittance .

In terms of health, Bisphenol A (BPA) is an epoxy resin that you want to stay away from. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a chemical that is secreted from the plastics found in bottled water and other varying plastics that have been studied and shown to cause harm to the human body. If you still are unsure, Wikipedia and Google exist for a reason, and I say that in the least snarky way as possible :). In any case, this chemical in the nanomolar amount (an extremely small amount) has been shown to negatively effect the brain, like reduced memory because it directly affects the hippocampus. It also has been linked to obesity, cancer, and heart disease. If you leave your bottle of water in the direct sunlight in the summer, you can almost taste the nice, delicious, chemical alteration of your water. If you decide to do some of your own research, make sure you use and engine like Google Scholar, to filter out all of the biased and sponsored information on this topic. Here's an abstract of an article that I found. BPA=BAD . We are drinking poison.

Finally, we come to the heart of what should be your concern; environmental degradation. The unfortunate part about living in this wilderness-less age is that everywhere you go, you will find some sort of trash or litter. I personally can attest to that, because of my many travels. And with that, I do claim that every trip I go on, there seems to be a one time used water bottle littered on the ground. What's so baffling about the times we live in is that the bottling companies, since the dawn of bottle returns, have spent years lobbying for bottled water to not be classified as a returnable and recyclable product. Why? because it would discourage people from buying cases of water because of the deposit that would put on it, which, depending on the size, would increase the cost to a few dollars. If left untouched on the ground, it wouldn't fully decay until 450 years after its initial creation. On a massive scale that bottles are being produced, we are literally burying ourselves in plastic that should be being reused. Our oceans are recirculating enormous patches of bottled water and plastics, contributing to chemical alterations of the marine settings (do recall that BPA thing) and just killing other life getting stuck in the plastics in general. And on top of all this, where do you think they get the water from? Michigan is one of the most hydrologic states in the nation because of our Great Lakes and the watersheds that they cause. With over 30 bottling factories, in Michigan, they are draining our lakes at a rapid rate and ship our water to everywhere else in the country. This isn't just a Michigan problem, it's turning into a national one, wherever fresh water may be found. Everyone is at risk.

In essence, I hope this has persuaded you to consider signing this petition. Together, we shall enact change. Together, we can protect our water, protect our wallets, and protect ourselves.