The Petition is Online

It's time to start petitioning!

Finally, the petition is online and can begin to be signed by UW-Madison students. Find the petition at change.org under Bottle Free Badgers. Or find us online on facebook. Just type in Bottle Free Badgers, and like the page. The link to the petition is also online. 8,000 signatures are needed so let's get those signatures ASAP. Also tomorrow Thursday, January 31st tables will be set up at Rheda's as well as Gordon's from 10-2pm so stop by say hi to some of the campaign members. The petition will also be available to be signed so make sure to do that.

Go Greener Badgers!

Motivation

If you're reading this, then welcome to the fight! For a bunch of information, and facts on bottled water and why a ban is so necessary, Tapped is a great documentary to watch. It's available on Netflix, and possibly available at your local library. If not Amazon has the movie for 19.99 or less. It's worth every dollar. Below are a few facts from the documentary.

•     714 million gallons of oil are used a year to produce plastic water bottles enough to fuel 100k cars
•       60-70% of bottled water is produced within state lines, resulting in no FDA testing
• This can result in chemicals, and unclean substances in the bottled water
• Coke's Dasani is purely tap water! Which you can get for 2000 times cheaper out of your faucet
• Water is a fundamental human right, stop corporate profiting and ban the bottle

The time is now to act upon this. It's time to stand up for our rights, and tell big corporations to get out of our local water sources.

There is enough water for human need, but not for human greed – Mehndi Gandhi 

Bottled or Tap?

The following is a direct Question and Answer from the city of Madison water utility page. All information can be found directly on http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/.

Q: What is the best choice of drinking water: bottled or tap water?

A: The answer is clear: tap water! That's because our water is of excellent quality,

strictly monitored, and affordable.

When we look at issues such as quality, monitoring and affordability, we see that bottled water doesn't always make the grade. For instance, some brands may be of excellent quality, but others can have inferior quality or they may be simply taken from municipal water supplies. And all bottled waters are expensive. For the price of one small bottle of water, you would be able to buy about 680 gallons of Madison tap water. 
Another important fact: there are fewer government regulations to guide the bottled water industry. Monitoring requirements aren't as stringent as are those for tap water.  For quality, consistency and affordability, tap water wins every time.

So there you have it! Tap wins over bottled water every time so make the switch today.

Annie Leonard: Bottled water costs about 2000 times more than tap water. Can you imagine paying 2000 times the price of anything else? How about a $ 10,000 sandwich? 

How can you help?

In order to have this campaign become successful, we're going to need your help. So here's three five steps to help us, and everyone else who believes in this campaign make it a reality.

1. Don't drink from or buy single use plastic water bottles. 
2. Tell your friends about the blog, and this campaign.
3. Do some research for yourself on the topic. You may be surprised on what you dig up.
4. If you see any bottles laying around in the garbage, streets, etc. recycle them! You're showing that you care. If someone sees you pick up a bottle and recycle it, it may have a chain reaction.
5. Join a ReThink Wisconsin meeting. Every Wednesday from 7-8pm in Science hall room 15 on the UW-Madison campus. 

 Any questions, comments, ideas, or if you're just looking to assist with the campaign, feel free to email Aaron Conradt at Aconradt@wisc.edu

Ideas can be life-changing.  Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.  ~Jim Rohn 

A little more info

One man alone cannot accomplish this task. Nor can a small group of individuals. In order for this goal to be achieved, a ban of all single use plastic water bottles on campus, we need your help! Tell your friends about this blog, spread the word that plastic bottles are unnecessary. Pull out that reusable water bottle and spread the buzz around campus. Here's a few facts on why this campaign is important to us. 

1. Global climate change is among us all, and is affecting each and every one of us. In order to produce a water bottle, it takes 1/3 the bottles holding volume filled with oil in order to produce the bottle. Burning this oil creates CO2 which is a major factor in climate change.

2. Profit from a natural resource. Coke, Pepsi, and other big companies are profiting millions each year on our natural resources that should be affordable, and non profited. This bottling is also depleting water in various communities around the country. In 2011 bottle water sales in the U.S.A. were extreme selling 9.1 billion gallons of water. Fishman, Charles (2012, May 17), Retrieved from: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/17/u-s-bottled-water-sales-are-booming-again-despite-opposition/ . Companies are scaring us into believing that bottled water is both healthier, and cleaner then tap. This however is false so don't believe everything you hear.

3. In the Pacific Ocean there is a garbage patch twice the size of Texas. This has been deemed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and consists of mainly plastic. None of these bottles are recycled, and very easily could have been. Silverman, Jacob.  "Why is the world\u0027s biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean?"  19 September 2007.  HowStuffWorks.com. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm>  22 January 2013.

While a university of this size is yet to ban the sale of plastic water bottles on campus, there's nothing saying that we can't be the first. A list of universities who have banned water bottles on campus is listed below:

University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point!
Belmont University
College of St. Benedict
Macalester College
Oberlin College
Seattle University
University of Portland
SUNY Upstate Medical University
Washington University in St. Louis

Also: Concord, Massachusetts is the first city in the U.S.A. to ban all sales of single use plastic water bottles under 1L. This is creating a large amount of buzz on this topic. Learn more about how this city accomplished this great task below:
--> http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/07/13710037-concord-mass-the-first-us-city-to-ban-sale-of-plastic-water-bottles?lite 

Welcome!

Hello and Welcome to the Bottle Free Badgers campaign at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This Blog will be an informative, and educational blog to give current updates about what's currently going on around campus with the campaign. In attempt to reduce the amount of waste produced on campus, a ban on single use plastic water bottles is the ultimate goal for this campaign. Weekly updates and info shall be posted as more comes along, but for now welcome! We are all glad you are interested in this campaign, and there shall be many times to come where your help will be needed. For this weeks agenda:

1. Draft a Petition with facts
2. Create this Blog
3. Produce a possible Facebook page

This process is going to be an exciting one so be sure to check back daily. Once again welcome to the campaign and On Wisconsin!