Plastic Bottles Begone!

The University of Winnipeg has taken a stand against the proliferation of landfill in the form of plastic water bottles by banning bottled water sales on campus. Last week's referendum showed three-quarters of the student body to be in favour of the ban in order to stop the flow of the 38,000 bottles sold on campus annually.
Each time there is a move to ban the sale of commodified water, the bottled water industry replies with the specious claim that -gasp!- such a ban will force people to buy unhealthy bottled beverages. Poppycock. People who have decided to buy a bottle of coke or whatever other less-than-healthy offering will do so. Water's presence nearby has little to do with such decisions. Similarly, those who have decided their craving is for the thirst-quenching, binary covalent compound will seek it out, or do without if all else fails. What makes the supposed pundits at the water bottling factories so sure that the rest of us have little to no functioning intellect? What convinces them that we have no ability to withstand the power of suggestion posed by the closeness of coke et alii when we find bottled water lacking? Get a grip, people. Actually, get a grip on the tap. Turn it and watch the water pour forth. Direct it into your ever-handy refillable water bottle like so many of us already do. That enables us to saunter right by your vending machines as though they never even existed. That enables us to keep in our pockets the money you would demand for a liquid that should be regarded as a free, basic right.
Tap water in the western world is just fine, thank you very much. Just think drinking water in so many locations in the developing world and you can see how ours is safe, safe, safe. Corporations who undermine public confidence in tap water need to be challenged. They need to be pressured to "Think Outside the Bottle". Our tap water is tested regularly, whereas many bottle water plants are tested infrequently, at best. Of course, there is the potential for deadly human error, as in Walkerton, Ontario, to come at us from our taps, but when you know the startling stats on how shaky the safety standards are for bottled water, you also know it's a case of six of one, half dozen of the other. That leads us back to the issues of the landfill, and the fact that water should be free.
To ensure the move to ban bottled water sales on campus has substance, every first year student at the University of Winnipeg will be given a free, reusable water bottle when they begin classes in the fall, and the university is going to install more water fountains and conduct audits of the water system to ensure its safety.
Since we can't all be first year students at the U of W, the rest of us can make a one-time investment in a reusable bottle, and then fill it at the tap each morning before we leave on our appointed rounds for the day. The price of the bottle will be recouped in no time, compared to the endless outlay of coinage needed to buy from vending machines. At the same time, our beleaguered planet will be saved from some of the deadly tonnes of needless garbage dumped on it each year.
You do have to wonder just how stupid and short-sighted these water vendors are, actually. Do they really not realize that they live on the same planet as the rest of us do? Do they really fail to grasp the reality that poisoning that planet with plastic refuse that could be avoided is a senseless act that will come back to haunt them as well as us?
Kudos to the University of Winnipeg and every other like-minded institution and public place. Honour and acclaim to the ordinary, average Joe who understands that bottled water is nothing more than a grab at our money. Criticism and complaint heaped in profusion on the multi-billion dollar industry that seeks to profit from creating fear around tap water and commodifying what should be free to all of us.