Just this past week we heard news of another university, the University of Vermont that is going bottled water free on their campus. This is great news for the many students who have fought for this initiative and hope this spills over into the public sector as well.
While I believe it is great that the students are pushing these efforts, I also wish that more politicians would stand up and say “we are proud of our tap water and we don’t need bottled water in our facilities”. We should focus our public money on free water and better fountains so that people want to use these facilities.
Education has been extended to the public sphere by some utility companies promoting tap water, but there hasn’t been a united effort to really push back against the privatization of our most valuable resource. We need to stand up against the bottled water giants and make sure they are held accountable for the message that they are pushing.
We will continue to push for the promotion of safe tap water and investments in infrastructure that ensures we have safe drinking water for everyone.