Within the past decade at Union College, students and faculty have been working extremely hard to decrease the fossil fuel and carbon footprint of the school. This has been a beneficial contributes to the school because now we have more recycle bins around the school and distributed toilets where we can choose the “type of flush” that we want. For this proposal, I propose that every incoming freshmen will get a free aluminum – swell type water bottle. Every year, 17 billion barrels are used to create at least 50 billion disposable water bottles in America alone. Also, reusable bottles such as the well can save an American about 200$ per year. Plastic bottles have also been linked to contain BPA (which is a plastic linked to cancer). So why not, where we can decrease our own risks and the rest of our student body’s risk? Furthermore, this being said, investing in the metal water bottles is very costly, but as a school that has a student body dominated by athletes, this would be a great investment to decrease out plastics purchase and increase our reusable bottle community. Although we are a small population, if all colleges and universities take part in this, the rate of oil required for plastics can decrease significantly.
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With this proposal, I am curious what the school would think about the cost/benefit. Although this is sad, the school’s main priority seems to be profit. If they gave out free water bottles they would both be spending money on that and risk decreasing the number of plastic water bottles students buy from the bookstore – which the school clearly makes a large profit on. While I think the school should prioritize sustainability much more, I wonder if this would be a concern for them.