The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: AugustWest on February 19, 2009, 06:59:59 pm
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Washington U. in St Louis, where I went and Inev currently studies, has banned bottled water on campus (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/19/water).
Interesting idea, since most bottle water is essentially tap water anyway. Of course, the bottlers are up in arms -- their point is that soft drinks (and beer) are in bottles too, why not ban them? Soft drinks are not easily obtainable in a non-bottled form, however.
What about it, Inev? Is this a big issue on campus?
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Friend of mine reported that her law firm was in an uproar when they decided to stop providing everyone with free bottled water. Well, 'uproar' in the sense of many, many memos going around and meetings held. Apparently some felt that filtered water in pitchers and glasses were not an adequate substitute, nor was it felt reasonable that if you didn't want filtered water in a glass, you could buy your own damn bottled water with part of your obscenely large corporate lawyer salary.
This was not a ban, you note - just a perk they stopped providing to people who could very well afford their own. People seem to feel oddly strongly about their bottled water.
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My $0.02 on the ridiculousness of bottled water is this:
Last summer, when we were amidst a terrible drought and under severe water restrictions for homeowners and small businesses, to the point where restaurants weren't allowed to bring water to the table except on request, the local Pepsi bottling plant was shipping our tap water out-of-state under the Aquafina label.
Yeah, lots of folks got pissed about that. Didn't change a darn thing, though.
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I've made choices that fit in with the sustainability concepts because I'm cheap and derive an immediate monetary benefit from my cheapness.
This is why I now drink my morning soda out of a Sigg bottle. Sometimes I can find 2-liter bottles of Cherry Coke for 99-cents while a single 20oz bottle is often $1.49. I can fill my 20oz Sigg bottle about 3 and half times for less than the cost of 1 single-serve bottle. Even when the 2-liters are regular price it's still an overall savings. The Sigg bottle paid for itself in like 6 weeks.
I also bring a bottle of water to work but that's more to drink myself into drinking more water and less soda. If I lug a pound and a half bottle of water to work I'm going to drink most of it, just so I don't have to feel stupid lugging it home. Which saves me at least 75-cents on the can(s) of Pepsi I would have bought from the break room vending machine otherwise.
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Yeah, I don't use bottled water because the entire concept is ridiculous. Water is freely available almost everywhere. Why the hell are you paying $1.39 for something you can get for free.
Back when bottled water first started it was (allegedly) pure from France or whatever. But nowadays it's just tap water in a bottle.
I've been in restaurants where they served me bottled water and I sent it back. I insisted they give me tap water.
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Yeah, I don't use bottled water because the entire concept is ridiculous. Water is freely available almost everywhere. Why the hell are you paying $1.39 for something you can get for free.
Back when bottled water first started it was (allegedly) pure from France or whatever. But nowadays it's just tap water in a bottle.
I've been in restaurants where they served me bottled water and I sent it back. I insisted they give me tap water.
I hate when they ask if you want "regular or sparkling" and "regular" means "bottled water that is still" and "tap" is an unspoken 3rd choice. I don't mind places that ask "sparkling, still, or tap" or some variation.
On a sort of related topic, a restaurant called Piccolo in Georgetown would always ask "mixed green or caesar salad" after you ordered your entree, implying the salad was included. But it was like $6 extra. That bugged the crap out of me.
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Are people still having vapours over plasticizers leaching from plastic bottles? Maybe the bans are also motivated by, "we know what's good for you, now shut up".
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I thought it was people were finally noticing the Elephant in the room that is bottled water. Sadly it seems it's just one moronic idea being defeated by another.
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Every time I am hungover I go to the store and buy an orange Gatorade. I then save the bottle to either drink out of or make a gravity bong with.. So basically I have 4 drinking bottles I fill myself, a gravity bong, and two or three gatorade bottles ready to go if needed.
Is this legal at Washington University? Am I going to die from the bottles? I kind of figured if they killed me I deserve to die.
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You just can't buy bottled water on campus.
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It just occurred to me that on the campus where i used to work, we couldn't buy Coke, or was it that we could only buy Coke? I can't remember which, but they had a deal with one company and didn't sell stuff from the other.
So, you know, not being able to buy some drink or other on campus is not that radically new an idea. At least you can get water from the tap, you can't get Pepsi from the tap if you don't like Coke.
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My college became a Pepsi Campus about three years into my tenure there. One of the editors of the school paper got into a metric shitload of trouble for wearing a Coca-Cola shirt to school the day the announcement was made, with all the Pepsi dignitaries present. It was going to turn into a maybe-we-won't-let-you-be-a-student-here kind of thing until someone nudged the administration and reminded them of the First Amendment. My campus group started importing Coke from the supermarket across the street and keeping it onhand in the office.
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My school only had Coke products in the soda fountains but they sold both at the convenience stores. I found this amusing because the football stadium had big Pepsi ads. Apparently the dining hall people and the athletics people didn't get together often enough.
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Count Spouse
that would make an excellent parody goth band name, wherein the guitarist and vocalist are married
after seeing slumdog millionaire, watching the dude fake-win 20 million rupees, and realizing that was still a smaller number than the number of empty plastic bottles that literally floored the slum from which he dogged, i can't ever support buying bottled water again. or soft drinks in plastic bottles. i'm not sure if the dudes and ladies behind that film had any eye toward sustainability encouragement, but dear god i weep at the horror of all that wasted plastic and its present and future effects
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the slum from which he dogged
I didn't realise it was that kind of film.
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the general reaction among my friends is "wait, people still buy bottled water?"
But... some of these are also people who get uncomfortable when we use a car to get someplace that's 5 miles away. "Wait, don't you have bikes, though?"
I haven't heard anything from the campus at large. I recently started carrying around a re-usable water bottle, because I have realized that I feel a lot better if I drink water throughout the day.
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I take an empty bottle to work to fill up at the numerous bubblers around the place but when I eventually lose it I will buy a new bottle. Seems weird to be banning it without banning bottled softdrinks and so on, I guess the idea is to encourage people to refill their water bottles but you can't refill soft drink.
I'm more or less with the guys who say it seems a silly idea to just ban things, make people aware of the pros and cons, provide water fountains and other alternatives.
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You know, while we're at it, why can't I get ginger ale for free from a tap in any public place?
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A valid question, though I imagine the desire to minimize civic stickyness plays into it to some extent.
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it seems weird to use the word Ban. It's not like students bringing bottled water onto campus are arrested. They just don't sell it in the cafeterias or vending machines anymore.
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True, it's just a business choosing not to carry a particular product.
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It certainly is weird how this is one of those things where an extremist radio host would frame this as extremists banning something and infringing on the rights of big business when at the heart of it, it is a private (or quasi-private, I realize that things like that are hazy with colleges) institution making an internal decision about which services it chooses to provide to its customer base... which, in other more Clear Channel friendly enterprises, the reactionary-bots would be programmed to slobberingly laud for three hours, between the commercials for gold investing and blue emu lotion and boner pills.
It's always funny how these things work.
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Why are we framing anything serious within the context of blowholes whose job is to garner ratings and from that ad revenue by being a king shit stirrer?
If your sources of comparison suck, you do by proxy.
BTW: be happy, you lost the Ace Man off the FM dial today, chunkles.
None of your words make sense.
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Oh good, I thought I was the only one.
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Dudes, I'm the one he's TALKING to and I'M a bit befuddled.
I'm pretty sure that the station he's talking about is how LA's irritating "radio lad mag" FreeFM FM talk station built around a 'round-the-clock format of, like, eight three-hour-blocks of Howard Stern ripoffs but... that's about all I got. I'm lost beyond that m'self.
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In the sober light of day I actually mostly get what was being said. But last night... there were too many phrases that weren't syncing up.
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Cabbage crates over the briney?
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'Twill be fair till they top it, no trouble there.
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One o' the crossbeams gone out askew on the treadle!
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When I was in college the campus-run food court gave a discount on fountain sodas and coffee if you brought your own mug. They even sold one with a carabiner handle. But I think that was more to save them money than for any environmental reasons.
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Paper cups in bulk at Sam's cost about two cents apiece. From Sysco, they cost even less in greater bulk. If they're giving discounts when you bring your own mug, it's likely not saving them money.
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Paper cups in bulk at Sam's cost about two cents apiece. From Sysco, they cost even less in greater bulk. If they're giving discounts when you bring your own mug, it's likely not saving them money.
What's the total cost of ownership of a paper cup, though, counting disposal costs? I mean, it sure isn't going to be gigantic-huge, but when you factor in the costs of landfill rental and the cost of producing another paper cup, I bet the whole thing goes up significantly.
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i would wager the campus-run food court did no more than pay a trash hauling company to get rid of their dumpstered stuff. furthermore i'm guessing the trash bill didn't drop very far with only a couple (twenty?) pounds less from cup waste.
i mean it's a nice gesture encouraging concientious greenery, not a cost-saving measure, that's all.