Student Action

Canada: Avoid bottled water, group urges

- Ryersonian. By Kaydi Pyette -

Students taste the difference between bottled and tap water at the Working Students' Centre's booth.

Tap water or bottled water?

That was the question students were tasked with answering during a taste test on Gould Street on Thursday as part of an ongoing campaign by the Ryerson Students’ Union to get people to put down the water bottle.

Rob Heydari of the Working Students’ Centre, who oversaw the taste test, said the group wants to challenge what it sees as corporate control of a public resource.

“The bottled water issue can stretch across political boundaries,” he said as he poured cups of water from two large, unmarked jugs and handed out free plastic canteens.

“On the left wing there’s the environmental concern and issues around sustainability. And on the right wing there’s the economic reason, that we’ve already paid for the tap water system, and paying for bottled water is in essence paying for the same thing over again.”

As the afternoon wore on, Heydari found that most of the students who came by couldn’t tell the difference between the tap water and the bottled water.

According to the WSC, 25 per cent of bottled water actually originates from tap water. Heydari also pointed out that the city tests its water quality every four hours.

Aroosh Chaudhry, a second-year business management student, said she spends almost $14 a week on bottled water she buys on campus. “It’s easier to buy it here and carry it along and finish it and throw the bottle away rather than carrying it from home,” she said.

Lily Troung, a first-year business managment student, said she has “stacks and stacks of water bottles” at home. “I don’t know, I just have this mindset that it’s unsanitary to drink from tap water,” she said.

The RSU is hoping to change views like these by taking part in the recent launch of bottled water-free zones on campuses across Canada.

Bottled water-free zones are areas that do not distribute bottled water and provide information on the problems with the bottled water industry. The Working Students’ Centre was the first to become bottled water-free on campus, and the other four RSU community service groups have since followed suit.

The zones campaign was organized by the Polaris Institute, the Sierra Youth Coalition and the Canadian Federation of Students.

Monique Woolnough, the SYC’s Ontario sustainable campuses co-ordinator, said this latest campaign is a way for students to enact lasting change.

“We were thinking about ways that students can start doing things that are more long-term on their campuses,” Woolnough said.

“An easy way to start building the base is to start enlisting allies who also see the problems with the environmental and social impact of the bottled water industry.”

So far, 15 campuses across Canada, including Ryerson, have bottled water-free zones.

According to Heydari, a large part of the solution lies in making tap water more accessible to students via clean, functioning water fountains.

“We noticed that in a lot of the new buildings there aren’t as many water fountains. In the older buildings where there are water fountains they’re not maintained very well,” he said. “And yet there are plenty of Coke machines with $2 bottles of water to be had.”

President Sheldon Levy agrees there is a dearth of fountains on campus.
“There are very few water fountains (in Ryerson’s buildings). In fact if you asked me to find one, I couldn’t.”

He said that installing more free water stations in new buildings would be a great addition to the Master Plan.

“If someone said, ‘You know, there are some really neat ideas that are safe and affordable and better for the environment, whether they are large jugs that are refillable but with paper cups that are disposable, or water fountains,’ it would be a wonderful idea.”