On Earth Day last week, campus environmental groups gathered on Ho Plaza to promote their cause. Part of the demonstration included a large arch constructed from 15 bags of plastic water bottles. The “Massive Water Bottle Structure” was part of the Cornell Society for Natural Resource Conservation’s student-run campaign, Back to the Tap. Members of SNRC, Sustainability Hub, Kyoto Now!, Roots and Shoots, Engineers for a Sustainable World and Eco House participated.

An initiative originally started and successfully completed at Washington University, the campaign aims to dissuade students from buying bottled water, get campus stores to stop selling bottled water and improve the availability of tap water by increasing water fountain placement.

In New York State alone, only about 20 percent of plastic water bottles are recycled, while the others are sent to landfills where they will take approximately 700 years to degrade. Even if the bottles are recycled, they are downcycled to lower quality state instead of being reused as plastic bottles. The end product is most commonly used as carpeting.

Back to the Tap is not seeking the elimination of plastic soda or juice bottles from campus, due to feasibility concerns. “We recognize that we have readily available alternatives with tap water and reusable containers. It’s not as easy to get a soda from a fountain.” K.C. Alvey ’12, a member of the campaign, said. “This also ties into the idea that water is a fundamental human right and soda is not. Therefore privatizing water is more of an ethical issue.”

According to members of the campaign, while Cornell students have clean water readily available to them, there are not economic incentives for the University to stop selling bottled water on campus. “Cornell is a business and they make tons of money from the sales of bottled water on campus and if you want to have them change that, you have to come with a way to compensate them for their losses,” Erin Johnson ’10 said.

Students from John's Hopkins, Bates, Penn State’s University Park campus, Brandeis University, Ohio Wesleyan University and Leeds University in the United Kingdom have also joined the initiative.