By Jenna Hoover
Forty-seven million gallons of oil are used each year to produce single-use water bottles, according to UCLA Sustainability’s “The Case for Reusable Water Bottles.” If UCLA, with its population of more than 70,000 students, faculty and staff members, were to eliminate its use of these bottles, our campus could play a part in preventing the emission of 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide ““ the equivalent of taking 100,000 cars off the road, as reported by UCLA Sustainability.
To do this, UCLA must make it more convenient for students to use reusable water bottles.
UCLA, working to become a more sustainable campus, has made some changes to be more reusable water bottle-friendly. In 2011, the university gave all on-campus residents reusable water bottles, according to the UCLA Dining Survey for 2011. However, UCLA must take the next step and provide more ways to fill them up.
While there are hydration stations ”“ filtered water dispensers ““ on campus, their uneven distribution makes them inefficient.
The Student Activities Center and John Wooden Center are the only buildings with these stations, and they are both located around Bruin Plaza. Students are more likely to buy water bottles from vending machines next to their classrooms than walk to Bruin Plaza to fill up their reusable water bottles.
UCLA must install them in locations like the North Campus Student Center and Court of Sciences, libraries and on-campus housing.
Some may argue that water fountains are suitable alternatives to these water dispensers; however, the stigma associated with water fountains prevents many from using them.
Dr. Martha Kaplan, a professor at Vassar College, explains why students and staff of Vassar choose single-use water bottles over water fountains on campus in the research paper “Lonely Drinking Fountains and Comforting Coolers: Paradoxes of Water Value and Ironies of Water Use.”
According to this paper, “no faculty and staff named a nearby drinking fountain as their source” of drinking water, with explanations ranging from the water being contaminated and unfiltered to the staff not wanting to drink water that has been “medicated” with fluoride and chlorine.
UCLA should promote the use of reusable water bottles in existing campus eateries as well. At Bruin Café, for example, a sack lunch includes a sandwich, a few snack items and a single-use water bottle.
In order to incentivize using reusable water bottles, Bruin Café should give its customers an extra snack item if they bring their own reusable water bottles and fill them up there instead of taking single-use water bottles. People are often motivated by their stomachs, and providing a tasty incentive for using reusable water bottles would encourage them to say “no” to single-use bottles.
To be a greener campus, UCLA should follow the lead of the 14 universities in the United States and Canada that have campus-wide bans on single-use water bottles, according to USA Today.
UCLA does not even have to take a step as drastic as instituting a ban if it makes it more convenient to use reusable water bottles. Through simple actions like installing more hydration stations on campus and incentivizing the use of reusable water bottles, our university can easily make a larger investment in the environment. Only then can UCLA begin to be considered truly sustainable.
Hoover is a first-year environmental science student.