AT COCA-COLA we support efforts to promote sustainability and protect our planet, and we’re disappointed by the bottled water ban at the University of Vermont (“ Kicking the bottled water habit,” Editorial, Dec. 12). While we praise UVM’s efforts to make drinking water available throughout its campus, people should be able to make their own decisions about how they drink it — from a bottle of Dasani, a water fountain, or a refillable bottle.
Coca-Cola has committed to investing in packaging designs that use less material, incorporate more renewable resources, and are 100 percent recyclable. PlantBottle packaging for Dasani is made with up to 30 percent plant-based materials and represents a key step toward recognizing this goal.
Comments
New England is not the part of the country famous for allowing choices. It is inconceivable that the university could install the drinking fountain retrofits AND still allow botttled water to be sold. Something HAD to be banned. New Englanders feel better when they ban something, it doesn't matter much what it is they ban, so long as they get to BAN something. It just makes them feel good. In the good old days, they banned people. So, they are slowly making progress.
Liberalism run amok.
Until we see a system that re-captures these "100 percent recyclable" plastic water bottles for recycling, bans send an effective message that there is a problem. UVM has one of the most effective recycling program that I have seen in large institutions. The act of banning bottled water from its campus sends the message to the tens of thousands of students, student families, and visitors that pass through the campus every year that this is the true model of sustainability-the better way. Perhaps not for Coca-cola's bottom line but certainly for ecological, environmental, and for energy resources as well. The fact remains that those "100 percent recyclable" bottles are not recycled at 100% - not even at 50% in many states. The fact is that most of those #1 plastic bottles ending up in landfills or as litter. The bottlers are not hearing that message. "Less packaging" is a solution to another, albeit related issue of excessive packaging & waste; but is nothing more than a corporate feel-good-spinning a green wash over the core issue of the dismal recycling rates of #1 plastic water and juice bottles.