A Guide to Reduce Plastic Water Bottles

A Guide to Reduce Plastic Water Bottles Steps to turn Ideas into Action Educate!! Begin your process by figuring out how many plastic water bottles people at your school use. Assuming that your school already has a recycling program - begin collecting the plastic water bottles over a set amount of time. This could be a week or a month depending on where you will be able to display these water bottles. Display these empty water bottles in an area where students are sure to see them: in a large display case, an area of the cafeteria, or the gym. This visual display will present a strong message - "We use too much plastic!!". It will be important to let students know how much energy and resources not only go into making these plastic bottles but recycling them as well. For some ideas, check out pg 3. Some students may not think these plastic water bottles are bad for the environment if they are recycling them. Introduce information on how plastic water bottles can break down and leach into the water. This can be done through "Water Taste Test" activities during lunch. Offer alternatives to plastic bottles: reusable water bottles with your school logo water fountains with better flow (no one wants to drink from a fountain if they have to stick their mouth too close to the spout) FOR IDEAS CHECK OUT PG 9. Re-Count the amount of plastic water bottles in your school's recycling bin. has the amount of plastic bottles in the recycling been reduced? how many re-usable water bottles have been sold? THIS IS YOUR SUCCESS STORY!!!! 1

Before you begin your steps, think about what your GOALS are for your plastic water bottle reduction project. Remember this will be a campaign that will involve educating people about how much better our tap water is than plastic water bottles. Getting people to change their behaviour may be a slow process, but hang in there and don t get discouraged. You are up against some pretty slick ad campaigns for how glam bottled water is. 1 Establish a baseline measurement: (See Section 6 to align your first measurement with your follow up measurement) What is a Plastic Water Bottle Audit? An audit is a measurement done to figure out how many plastic water bottles the people at your school are using, as opposed to using re-usable water bottles and drinking tap water. Why do a Plastic Water Bottle Audit? In order to see how successful your plastic water bottle reduction campaign will be, it is important to measure how many plastic water bottles are currently being used at your school. Your first Water Bottle Audit will establish a baseline measurement to compare to. After you implement your reduction campaigns, you will do another Water Bottle Audit that you will compare to your baseline measurement to see how much your school reduced plastic bottle use. This will show you how successful your campaign was! How do you do a Plastic Water Bottle Audit? To begin your audit, separate the bottles from the recycling bin as well as the garbage and count them. This count can be done over 1 week, 1 month, or longer. Make this fun! At Burnaby North Secondary, a group of students stay after school once a week to listen to music, chat, eat yummy food and collect and count the water bottles from their school. It may be easier and more visually powerful if you begin by collecting the plastic bottles for a one month time period and use this as a display. Photo courtesy of Burnaby North s Youth 4 Tap initiative 2

Find out more about the reduction and elimination of Plastic Water Bottles at: How to Reduce Plastic Bottles Resources: http://www.toxicfreecanada.ca/pledge.asp http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/greenschools/pdfs/sustbestpractices.pdf http://www.ontarioecoschools.org/ Metro Vancouver's Tap Water Campaign This is a great resource for ideas, guides, some pretty funny videos and a really useful App called " Get Tap Map" Check out the site at: http://www.metrovancouver.org/region/tapwater/pages/default.aspx For Social Resources and Movies/Videos check out pg. 7 Why is it Important to Reduce Plastic Water Bottle Use? A 20% reduction in single use plastic water bottles in Metro Vancouver in a year = 7 million less bottles in Metro Vancouver landfills; 3.35 million kilograms reduction of greenhouses gasses; 12 thousand 800 fewer barrels of oil used (Metro Vancouver Tap Water Campaign, 2009) What s in that bottled water? Water bottle regulations do not require regular testing or listing ingredients, and most bottled water does not have to meet any particular standards. In BC, the BC Drinking Water Protection Act and the BC Drinking Water Protection Regulation regularly test tap water quality. The Food and Drug Act is responsible for the safety of bottled water, however, the FDA s does allow a certain level of fecal coliform in bottled water, while our Drinking Water Protection Acts prohibits tap water from containing any fecal coliform counts. Yeah, that s right think about what you are drinking the next time you open a bottle of water vs. turning on your tap. YUCK!!!! 3

VISUAL IDEAS TO MOTIVATE YOUR SCHOOL Make sure to display your collected water bottles in an area where students can easily seem them this will have the biggest impact and can contribute to behaviour changes. Remind people that typically only 5% of plastic water bottles are actually recycled most end up in the land fill!!!! "The total amount of energy embedded in our use of bottled water can be as high as the equivalent of filling a plastic bottle one quarter full with oil." Check out this Brita Ad from Germany, pointing out the amount of oil that people consume from using plastic water bottles. Burnaby North students filled hundreds of plastic water bottles 1/4 full of molasses, which looks like crude oil, to represent this fact. 4

2 Take a Water Bottle Poll: This poll could be as short and sweet as just 2 questions: 1. Why do you use plastic water bottles? a. Convenience b. The water tastes better c. The water is cleaner d. Lack of other options at the school e. Other: 2. Would you consider using tap water or re-usable water bottles? a. If the re-usable bottles were convenient and more readily available b. If I knew that tap water was just as good or better than bottled water c. If there were better water fountains in the school d. Other: The responses to the poll may give you better insight as to how you should focus your plastic water bottle reduction campaign. If most students use plastic water bottles because they think the water tastes better, and is cleaner, than your focus will be on education, taste tests and some scientific facts. If most students however, don t drink tap water because of the poor quality of water fountains in the school you could focus on raising money for updated water fountains. See pg 12 for some fundraising ideas on how to bring a new water fountain into your school. www.arcusepito.co Reusable Water Bottle from Killarney Secondary School 5

3 Education Many people use plastic water bottles because they mistakenly believe that the water in the bottles is somehow better than the water from the tap, or they just don t realize the detrimental effects of plastic water bottles on our environment. They may think that if they recycle the bottle, then everything is fine. An education component of your campaign will be very important and will help students realize just how nasty plastic water bottles really are. Below are some different ideas that you can do to educate students at your school about plastic water bottles. Display the plastic water bottles that your school has used: Collect the plastic bottles over a set period of time it could be one week, but one month will have more of an impact. This should be fairly easy to collect, as most schools will have recycling bins, but you may also want to consider going through the garbage in the cafeteria or classrooms as well. It is surprising how many recyclables will end up in the garbage bin. The display should be in an area that is noticeable for all of the students. Think about an art display case, an area of your school s cafeteria, the stage area in your gym, etc. You want these bottles to have a big visual message WE USE TOO MANY PLASTIC BOTTLES!! Get the support of teachers and administration to organize where you ll store the bottles while you collect them and where you ll display them. Set up a Take the Water Challenge taste test: This can be done during lunch time and can let students know that tap water tastes just as good, or better than the bottled stuff. 6

Education Resources: Check out these powerful videos and images that show just how dangerous plastics are to our ecosystem. There are also some videos produced by Metro Vancouver to show how much better tap water is than bottled water they are pretty good. These videos could be shown and looped during an education presentation. YouTube Videos: Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Pacific Garbage Dump: ABC News, Nightline http://www.youtube.com/user/metrovancouver#p/a/e1eeb8608cf5a356/0/sv62rkhxrzw Movies to check out: Tapped by Stephanie Soechtig. The web site is www.tappedthemovie.com Flow: For Love of Water by Irena Salina. Facebook Group: Youth4Tap@gmail.com http://www.facebook.com/groups/youth4tap Burnaby North students have created a student group called Youth 4 Tap. It consists of students from across Metro Vancouver that want to end bottled water in schools. Youth 4 Tap, is a great area for more resources, support, and to share ideas on what your school is doing to reduce plastic water bottles. 7

Burnaby North students began their End Bottled Water campaign by collecting plastic water bottles over a two month period. About 1000 bottles were collected!!!! They displayed these bottles in huge display case in the hallway of their school so that all students and staff could see the amount of plastic that was used in such a short amount of time. Some other actions that they have done are: Displayed the plastic bottle caps inside a clear jar want to know more info on how dangerous these caps are? Check out pg 7 for YouTube video links. Metro Vancouver provided some reusable water bottles to give out to staff and students as prizes. The campaign team are buying re-usable water bottles to sell at the school. They showed the movie Tapped by Stephanie Soechtig to over 70 students and staff. They found this movie extremely effective for hitting home the message of reducing bottled water use. The Burnaby School District is currently installing water refill stations in high schools across Burnaby. Check with your local school district to see if they can possibly do the same. They removed the labels from plastic water bottles and connected them together to make streamers. They will be stretching these across hallways to show how much plastic just the labels alone use and how people can be obsessed with brand names Tap vs Bottled Water Taste Test Water Bottle Awareness Poster from Burnaby North This posters displays environmental, scientific, economic and consumer information on the water bottle industry in a unique and eye catching format 8

Support for your campaign: To make your campaign a success, get everyone on board! Make it fun and meaningful for volunteers. At Burnaby North, they set 1 night per week where anyone can come out to collect and count the bottles. Volunteer numbers vary from 3-10 a night and they have a lot of fun doing it together. Not only can your group make a difference, volunteers can have fun and spend time with interesting people! Make volunteer jobs fun and meaningful! For example, instead of just getting everyone together to count bottles put on some good tunes and make an event out of it! Get your principal on board and include clubs, parents, teachers and other students who are interested. Consider hosting The Truth about Plastic presentations at lunch to get more participants. 4 Alternatives for Plastic Water Bottles If you want to change student and staff behaviour at your school, then you need to provide them with an alternative to plastic bottles. Water refill stations o As Burnaby School District is on board with installing these in high schools, check with your school district to see if they would be willing to do this as well. Sell re-usable water bottles o Various companies such as Beyond Mars in Surrey can do a design or logo on a stainless steel water bottle. Costs for these bottles are approximately $9.00 each o Check if your City or District can supply you with a few re-usable water bottles for prize giveaways at the water taste test challenge or perhaps a random draw for those that completed the bottled water survey. New water fountains Gulf Islands Secondary School has installed a new water fountain that not only has a regular spout for drinking, but has an area for filling up a water bottle and records how many plastic water bottles have been reduced by using the fountain instead. In 3 days, the fountain recorded 900 plastic water bottles that have been eliminated. Cost of the fountain is a little high at $2978.75 with filters and installation. Check out pg. for potential funding sources you may be able to get some or all of the costs covered. Johnston Heights Secondary School bought re-usable stainless steel water bottles from Beyond Mars at a cost of $9.00 each, including the design. These bottles were given out as prizes during their Green Forum. A design, such as your school logo, can be laser printed on them and sold to students as a potential fundraiser perhaps for the water fountain with the digital counter. For further information email scott@beyondmars.com 9

5 Facing the Challenges Changing people s behaviour can be difficult and you may face a number of challenges trying to reduce plastic water bottle use. Don t give up. Remember that every little change can make a big difference. Some of the challenges that you may need to be aware of are: School contracts o If your school sells bottled water in the cafeteria or vending machines, there may be a contract between your school district and a company that provides drinks. This may be very difficult to overcome, and it is suggested that you work with the school district and your own school for support in potentially ending this contract. Don t let this stop you from educating consumers to stop buying water, regardless of whether the water is available or not. Student Behaviour o This cannot be emphasized enough trying to change student s behaviour can be an uphill battle. When you launch your campaign you will need to educate and raise awareness so that students and staff know and understand the dangers of plastic water bottles. o To achieve the best results in changed behaviour START SLOW if you go directly for banning, you will be discouraged. The need for alternatives o In order to reduce the use of plastic water bottles, alternatives must be provided which are just as good, if not better. Look at what alternatives will make the most sense for your school a water refill station, purchasing reusable water bottles, a new water fountain or a change in water flow to existing fountains. Britta Ad Campaign, Germany 2010 10

6 Measure Your Impact This will be your success story and a way to show just how many plastic water bottles students really use. Short Term Goals: Aim for a 20% reduction in plastic bottled water at your school 1) Make sure to record the number of bottles that were collected from the recycling bin, and garbage. 2) You can keep data on a daily basis, to see how many bottles you are collecting. This data should be based on pictures, notes, and count of the bottles. 3) At the end of the time period, create your summary of the amount of plastic water bottles that have been eliminated from the garbage and recycling bins. This time period could include an education campaign, and re-usable water bottle fundraiser. Big Dreams: Aim for an 80% reduction in plastic bottled water at your school. This will take a school wide effort and will require working with your areas School Board 1) In order to completely eliminate the use of plastic bottled water at your school, students will need other water sources: a. Sell re-usable water bottles as a fundraiser for your school b. Money from this fundraiser could potentially go towards the purchase of a new water fountain (one with a spout for water bottles) c. Use of water coolers can help to eliminate bottled water, but can also be costly and can put into question the message of how great our tap water is. 2) The difference in the amount of plastic water bottles from the baseline measurement to the second measurement will be the proof that all of your hard work has indeed made a great impact on plastic reduction. Congratulations!!!! Young Albatross found with stomach filled with plastic caps; believed to be mistaken for food. www. mindfully.org Across the Pacific Ocean, Plastics, Plastics, Everywhere, Charles Moore. 11

7 Potential Funding Sources This represents a small list of the potential funding sources that can assist you with your plastic water bottle reduction project. Depending on the size and scope of your project, you may be able to ask community organizations, such as Business Improvement Associations, or Community Centres, for their assistance. Name of Funder Toyota Evergreen Learning Grounds School Ground Greening Grants WWF- Canada Green CommUnity School Grants Program Youth Philanthropy Council (Vancouver Foundation) Deadline Web Site Potential funding September 2010 June 2011 October 7, 2010 (check out their web site for next year s deadline) YPC 2010 Funding Deadlines: Letter Of Intent: September 16, 2010 Application Deadline: October 7, 2010 http://www.evergreen.ca/en/funding/grants/ http://www.studentawards.com/greencommunitypro gram/default.aspx ypc@vancouverfoundation.ca Check out web site for next year s funding deadlines $500 to $3,500 for publicly funded Canadian schools (JK Grade 12); $500 to $2,000 for notfor-profit daycares Your school could receive up to $5,000 to make your green idea grow! Mini-grants are up to $500 Smaller Funding Sources Metro Vancouver Local Municipality School District Movie Night May be able to supply re-usable water bottles for prizes, posters and other supplies for your awareness/education campaign May be able to supply re-usable water bottles for prizes, or individual filters for water bottles. May be able to supply new water alternatives such as Water Refill Stations, or replacing older water fountains Sell popcorn and re-usable water bottles at movie nights to raise money, while raising awareness! 12