No more plastic water bottles

Portland State is known as a bellwether of the sustainability movement. Hoping to further that reputation, President Wim Wiewel has established a task force addressing the sustainability movement that colleges and universities across the country have joined: eliminating plastic water bottles.

Since PSU implemented the Take Back the Tap campaign two years ago, 11 refillable hydration stations have been installed on campus, and 10 additional stations are planned. The campaign’s momentum inspired Wiewel to assemble the Sustainable Drinking Water Task Force, a group of eight—three students and five administrators—charged with assessing the options to reduce plastic water bottle usage on campus.  

Eight U.S. colleges and universities—including Belmont University, Oberlin College, Seattle University and the University of Portland—have responded with an outright ban on the sale of bottled water, according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

The PSU task force will explore all options, but an outright ban on bottled water could be difficult to implement. The university has active vending contracts with Coca Cola and Aramark, and restricting students’ freedom of choice may prove unpopular.

“On the whole, I do not like to ban things,” Wiewel said. “I do believe in consumer choice and freedom. You want to create an environment where people can make the healthy choices, and not by banning the alternative.”

“PSU has a huge number of people using something other than private automobiles, and we got that result by developing good public transportation,” Wiewel said. “I like working with alternatives and options rather than bans.”

Restructuring the contracts with Aramark and Coca-Cola is not out of the question, but in some cases even the university can’t control what is distributed in vending machines, and changing the contracts now could be costly. “[When you restructure contracts] things get expensive,” Wiewel said. “This is part of thinking about options. We don’t want to be shooting ourselves in the foot for the sake of making a symbolic movement.”

However, Wiewel also said that Portland State “will make a change when the next round of the contracts begins.”

Another potential problem with a ban is the fact that PSU cannot regulate the surrounding markets that sell bottled water. “Because there are so many privately managed stores in the University
District, if bottled water was not available at PSU stores, some students would buy bottled water at other locations,” said Director of Planning, Sustainability and Real Estate for PSU Dan Zalkow, who is an integral part of the Sustainable Drinking Water Task Force. “Others would buy similar bottled products such as vitamin water, as opposed to switching to bringing their own bottles.”

One of the alternatives to an outright ban would be a shift toward making jugs of water available in each of the university’s academic departments. According to Zalkow, a few dozen departments currently spend an approximate total of $25,000 annually on water jugs. Some departments already choose to do this, either because they are located far from water fountains or because the pipes in their building are old, as in Neuberger Hall.

Ultimately, the task force will form recommendations to majorly reduce the consumption of plastic bottles on campus. “We are looking at the whole spectrum of options, from doing nothing to banning bottled water and all the ideas in between,” Zalkow said. “We are looking at many ideas that involve education and outreach, as well as ideas that involve installing more hydration stations and making them standard in new buildings.”

“We are still in the data collection, analysis and idea generation phase,” Zalkow said. “We won’t have recommendations for a couple of months.”

The task force is expected to complete their analysis at the end of this year. Wiewel is hopeful that its recommendations further the commitment to sustainability that is important to so many Portland State students without demonizing plastic bottles.

“I don’t want to vilify plastic water bottles, because in many countries they are godsends. There are parts of the world where plastic water bottles are the only form of clean drinking water,” Wiewel said. “What I hope is that the task force will come up with ways to eliminate the waste associated with plastic water bottles, while still meeting the needs that various organizations and meetings have.”

For now, movements like Take Back the Tap are relying on consumer discretion, and a systematic shift toward sustainable choices to combat plastic water bottles.