WWU Bottle Water Ban Effective April 1, 2014

Gerald and Carolyn, the EOHS GEF Team, (photo from the GEF Facebook page)

In case you haven't heard, it's official! Beginning April 1, 2014, Western Washington University will become the largest university, public or private, in Washington state to end bottled water sales on campus, following a student initiative in the spring of 2012 that stated that the selling of bottled water was an unsustainable practice, and asked the university to halt the sale of bottled water on campus.

According to a press release, WWU student, member of Students for Sustainable Water, and one-half of the student team that partnered with Western Libraries on a GEF grant to have a water-bottle refilling station installed in the library, "Bottled water and water privatization is detrimental to the environment, to human rights to water, and simply doesn't make sense in a region where we have clean, amazing tap water." As she points out, this change is important "because it means upholding Western's values in sustainability and social justice."