Although water fountains are located everywhere on campus, there are still a large group of students would prepare buying bottled water. Most of students think the bottled water are easily to carry every day because they can just crab and go. Others think there is a weird taste in the tap water or water fountain or they think the water source is not clean enough. However, most people do not know that United States actually put more regulations on tap water than bottled water. It means that the tap water is essentially safer for people to drink.
Notice the newly installed hydration stations on campus, those are located in several areas such as library, white building, residence halls, and so on. The hydration stations provides cool filtered water with better taste.
Every year Penn State campus recycle more than 200 tons of plastic bottles. Every second is US there are 1500 bottles being consumed.
It is 1500 x 60second/ minute x 60 minute/hr x 24 hr/day x 365 day/yr = 4.7 x1010 bottles
However only 24 percent of those bottles are being recycled!
1-24%=76%
76% x 4.7 x1010 bottles = 3.6 x1010 bottles are not recycled!
On the year of 2011, Penn State spent $16,160 on electricity, water, and filters; not to mention the cost for the installations! Be respectful to the machines, and start living green!
There are 36,000 16-ounce plastic bottles in one ton.
And since “For every 1 ton of plastic that is recycled we save the equivalent of 2 people’s energy use for 1 year, the amount of water used by 1 person in 2 month’s time and almost 2000 pounds of oil”.
so 3.6 x1010 ÷ 36,000= 1000,000 =1 x106 tons
So recycling those 76% of plastic bottles would have save 2 x106 people’s energy use for 1 year, or 2×109 ponds of oil!
Although it is very convenient and easy around our Penn State campus to recycle bottles, that is not necessarily the case around the U.S. everywhere. I think it is just a shame when people around college campuses do not recycle considering it is so easy and convenient, but other places are not so convenient.
That’s a pretty cool video, thank you for sharing with me!
It is hard to believe that the tab water have more restrictions than the bottled ones. It’s most common to assume bottled water which costs more and have more advertisements would have a better source or have a better water treatment processes. It turns out that the companies are spending most of their money on advertising and making commercials rather than actually making our water better.
If the information can be more promoted to the people or the governments can put more restrictions on the bottled waters, I believe it would save plenty of bottles for our environment!
That’s a really interesting aspect to think about where does water go eventually. I never thought about it in my daily lives actually. I did some research on wastewater treatment, I think after water is dumped it’s going through different process filter out the waste until it is whether reuse for further use or be transported into the nature.
Here is a quick video briefly describing the treatment process if you are interested about it!
Also notice there are different water source that may be treated differently. Such as the waste water from our chemistry would be treated differently from the flush water. If it the treated wrongly our pipes might be destroyed.
Some bottled water companies add trace amounts of minerals for a subtle flavor. This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_d1i5lt7zQ is one of the many blind taste-test experiments that found most people cannot tell the difference.
Companies do a lot of marketing research and utilize deceptive packaging and label designs to make consumers feel like their product is better than water directly from the tap. For example: Aquafina uses its’ fancy exotic name and mountain component of its’ logo to make you feel like your water came from the fresh springs of some distant mountain. The reality? It’s just purified tap water.
It is very true that drinking tap water can not only save our money but also reduce our footprint and help our school become more sustainable.
I was concerning about what about the water past the mouth? Did they just go waste? I looked up online, some says that that water goes down to a small drain and to sewage. However, I’m not sure where the water ends up eventually.
I noticed some people fill the water but left it over night so they pull out and refill the second day. I don’t see there’s any research on that but I consider it’s consider to be waste.