Rethink Your Thirst
"Rethink Your Thirst" event convinces hundreds to ditch the plastic and switch to sustainable containers.
Students at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) consume about 8,000 plastic water bottles per day on campus. This staggering number dropped by a few hundred in a matter of hours on January 26th. In response to an impressive 8 foot by 4 foot tower of plastic bottles —collected in just a few hours on campus—over 250 students, faculty, and staff pledged to kick their plastic water bottle habit in favor of a reusable canteen.
The "Rethink Your Thirst" event was staged by the Bren School Sustainability Committee (BSSC) as part of a nation-wide University event, RecycleMania. The BSSC is a student organization of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UCSB and RecycleMania is a 10-week nationwide recycling and waste reduction competition with over 450 universities participating this year. This was the first year that UCSB took part in the competition.
In exchange for a disposable bottle or a signed pledge, passersby were given a coupon for a discounted reusable canteen at the University Bookstore. What is the effect of 250 people ceasing to purchase single-use bottles? Eliminating the production, transportation, and sale of over 45,000 plastic bottles saves 12,000 gallons of gasoline (54,000 pounds of greenhouse gases - the equivalent of taking 15 SUVs or 20 cars off the road for a year) and 1,875 pounds of plastic (which takes over 1,000 years to break down). And these numbers were calculated using only the actual signatures that were collected!
For more information on RecycleMania, visit the UCSB RecycleMania page or the national page.
For more information on the BSSC and more statistics on water bottles, visit our information page.
Thanks to Associated Students Recycling, UCSB Sustainability, and the University Bookstore.