The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Meaghen Brown Students take pledge to avoid bottled water [Click to enlarge]

You are waltzing out onto the grassy knoll sloping toward the library during a Middlebury reception. Noticing a server skirt by with a gleaming silver platter, you grab some crackers and cheese perched within your reach. Basking in salty deliciousness, you pause and chew.

Feeling thirsty, you wander over to the white-clothed tables and reach for one of a row of Aquafinas. You twist the cap, remove it and lift it to your lips.

Indeed, between vending machines in most dorms and on campus vendors like Midd Xpress, a disposable beverage is often just an arm's reach away. But do you know where that water is coming from?

It probably hails from a public water source, and was purified by reverse osmosis, as Dasani water is. That pure, crisp water is just as pure and crisp as your own tap water. And according to Jen Foth '08 of the Middlebury chapter of the national Think Outside the Bottle Campaign, the only difference between water from a bottle and water from a faucet in America is a matter of price - the price that deflates your wallet, and the price that scars the environment.

Perhaps you've noticed them tabling. As we speak, or rather drink, Think Outside the Bottle campaign is busy striving to reduce the use of bottled water on the Middlebury campus - one effort in a nationwide attempt to eventually eliminate the market all together. This movement derives from Corporate Accountability International (CAI), which demonstrates against irresponsible corporations from General Electric to Big Tobacco.

Foth became involved with CAI this past summer, and later brought the Think Outside the Bottle campaign to the attention of the College's Sunday Night Group (SNG), where it has been warmly received by students.

Foth's ultimate aspiration is to persuade Middlebury to terminate its contract with Aquafina. This goal, which might have seemed unrealistic just a few years ago, now has precedents all over the nation. Just recently, the mayor of San Francisco signed on to the CAI initiative, banning city-funded purchases of bottled water.

Continued...

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