UBC has been very public about its attempts to curb the use of bottled water, bringing it line with the trend of Vancouverites and growing cultural trends of sustainable and environmentally friendly. It's hip to be green these days. While I applaud the enthusiasm, I can only think that this effort is not only too little too late but is being done in a very bad manner.
While meeting with the UBC Admins in their fancy offices last week, your furry Commodore Cuddles encountered what can only be described as utter incompetence. While my round bushy tail was following my larger, but oh so fluffy behind into the lobby, I asked for some water. I wanted to whet my whistle before the meeting (they had no bourbon) and then to my excitement I was brought water in a cup and told "we want to curb our bottled water use." Then I died a little inside. The cup they brought me was neither recyclable nor compostable! anger raging! How dumb are our UBC Administrators that in trying to be environmentally friendly they do the complete opposite? I can only imagine the meeting where someone "important" mentioned replacing recyclable bottles with non-recyclable cups. Could they have used paper cups? Yes, but they didn't. Instead, they made the idea of continuing the use of bottled water a good idea and someone decided to buy cups instead. Unfortunately, the cups they replaced the bottles with are just as wasteful.
Hell, what's wrong with water fountains? I don't know, but for the last five years UBC has been removing water fountains from buildings and then actively not installing water fountains in any of the new buildings. Search Buchanan and Swing and you'll find nothing that replaces bottled water, unless you go to the washrooms to fill up your Nalgenes. Except the sinks in Swing (where all the Arts kids are forced to live now that Buch B looks like a suicide bomber hit it) seem to be designed to make that impossible. Try it sometime. Me, I prefer to drink at a watering hole, so when I don't want to get my furry nose red, how else am I supposed to drink? At UBC I can do three things: 1) Spend money on bottled water and hate myself; 2) Drink out of the washrooms, or 3) Go meet with some UBC Big Wigs and try not to mention how retarded they are.
02 October, 2008
Bottled Rage!
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11 comments:
Thank you CC! My anger at UBC's bad environmental habits is almost as strong as the rage I feel towards their stupidity. These people work at a university?!!! And don't get me started about the waterfountains. I can't stand those little "public health warnings" they put up above the waterfountains they didn't remove at CocaCola's request. If the water is unsafe, shouldn't UBC be, like, fixing it? Campus Planning now mandates that every new building be built with a bike commuter shower - but no waterfountains to refresh those poor brave souls who cycle to work.
I'd like to start a new movement - sensible environmentalism. It's like regular environmentalism except you use your brain. You ask yourself questions like: "does paying for carbon offsets give me permission to fly/drive as much as I want?" "does having local organic produce delivered to my house by a gas-guzzling truck actually make me a better human being?" or "since I'm recycling, do I really get to stop reducing and reusing?"
Its the uncritical band-wagon-jumpers who give the right-wing a reason to call environmentalism unsensible. But if done properly, its the most sensible thing we can do.
Rennie
Seriously - safe tap water isn't that hard to do. Building drinking fountains isn't that hard. Neither are flushless urinals, but -I haven't seen any of those around, either.
I see many aspects of the current environmental movement as just a way of buying indulgences. Carbon credits are the worst example of this (maybe I'll write an article on that later)
Another pet peeve of mine is trading functionality in products products for crappy 'sustainable' ones. For example, the coffee cups that AMS food outlets use suck majorly. I have at lest a half-dozen problems with those cups, chief among them that customers often take 2 cups because they aren't insulted properly. And what does it matter if they're compostable if a) the vast majority of people throw them out anyway and b) there are very few compost bins on campus.
-Aaron
I had a TA who once told me that there was actually nothing wrong with the water fountains, but pressure from bottled water company resulted in many of them being shut down. I am not sure if that is true.
Is there anything "unsafe" about tap water in BUCH and the SUB etc?? I hope not, because even if you don't straight up drink it, you eat food with the hands that you wash it in...
-R
PS
So glad the DA is back to regular UBC related posting, it gives me something to do in class
What was the cup made of? There is a movement on campus to make things more recyclable.
UBC does do it's own composting so they are able to accept paper cups and napkins in with the composting (apparently the process is faster). The food containers in the SUB are made with sugar cane/barley (I forget the exact composition, but they do have an info poster at the SUB Pendulum restaurant). Recently at the UBC IRC snack shop they are now using items made from "corn plastic" which can be thrown into the composting bin when you are done slurping your soup.
Also, they have recycling bins for batteries, CDs, plastic bags etc...
Nothing is perfect yet, but they are working on it. Check out the campus sustainability website if you have any questions.
Ugh, water in the water fountains at UBC are not safe to drink from. Since they don't get used a lot the water just sits there in the pipes and if you want water you may need to flush the water for about 2 minutes before the fresh stuff comes through. Sometimes it doesn't, it has dirt in it!!!
Well the water in the drinking fountains comes from the main water lines, right? So there should only be a few feet of pipe to flush through at most. And what about those water fountains that cool/filter the water? I remember UBC used to have them (or maybe I'm mixing in high school memories)In less that 30 seconds on google I found a company that sells drinking fountains that cool, filter, and are wheelchair accessible. Come on UBC!
As to UBC's sustainable containers, two problems. First, the food containers they chose to replace the Styrofoam ones (consumer pays 25 cents) don't work - I bought noodles in one and the grease soaked through burning my hands. The container then disintegrated, dumping my noodles. I'm all for alternatives to foam, but make sure they work.
And corn plastic isn't really sustainable. First, the corn will only break down in a very controlled environment (the article I read said something like 10 days of 140 degree F heat. There are less than 150 facilities like this in the world, no idea if UBC can handle it) And corn is becoming amazingly expensive thanks to its use as an alternate energy source. There already isn't enough food to go around.
UBC is moving in the right direction, but not everything that is done in the name of greenness is a good idea.
I think that all the takeout containers and cutlery should be made edible.
Pat,
while the water from the fountains may not be Dissani clean, I don't think it is unsafe. I have been drinking from UBC water fountains for three years and have yet to die from ecoli.
The Hennings building has sufficiently low water quality that it should be declared as part of the developing world (although I think most of its inhabitants just drink coffee instead). The water in the basement toilets there is actually the colour of tea, and no amount of flushing the water fountains gets rid of the awful metallic taste. Part of the problem with revamping the drinking systems is the truly outrageous amount of money required to get plant ops to do the work. Seriously, fuck those guys and their exclusive contract.
"The water in the basement toilets there is actually the colour of tea"
Its a good thing we're not drinking out of the toilets?
The reason you're supposed to flush for a few minutes before you drink, is a lot of the campus water pipes are coated with lead. This is not a problem if you've got continuous water flow through the pipe, but if you don't (as is the case with water fountains that don't get used often), there is enough time for the still water to dissolve some of the lead.
Aaron: even if people don't compost cups that they get from, say, Blue Chip, they will still disintegrate at the landfill way faster than would styrofoam cups (if styrofoam ever did disintegrate).
I for one don't see the difference between drinking from a water fountain/a tap in a washroom. Seriously, in some cases they're 20 feet apart.
I also don't understand at all why anyone would ever use disposable cups on a regular basis. Seriously - reusable cups always have immensely better insulation, they won't spill when you're in class, and they save you money.
Anonymous 1:05PM:
News flash: water is used to make coffee.
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