It’s refreshing to see that college students are beginning to do more than merely protest against environmental and health-damaging issues pushed by corporate America. They’re also going beyond pushing for labels and “co-existence.” They’ve started to go for the economic throat of big business by banning certain toxic products from campuses, such as bottled water.
Though this story is based on a Harvard student body decision, as of early 2012, over 90 colleges and universities of varying sizes and types throughout the USA have banned or restricted bottled water sales as demanded from student-led referendums and lobbied directives. The motives are mostly ecological.
But there are also health issues directly related to using those plastic bottles and of course tap water. The offered solution is creating stations on campus that can effectively filter and process out those chemicals where students and faculty may refill glass or metal containers or even reusable plastic containers.
Those stations, which purify water with charcoal filtration and reverse osmosis, have become ubiquitous in health food stores and even standard supermarkets.
Instead of spending a half-dollar to a dollar-and-a-half for a small bottle of water from multinational corporations that steal water from regions at no or low cost while reselling their bottled water for high profit margins, one can spend a quarter to a half-dollar for a gallon of water purified the same way those multinationals do, if they actually do purify their water at all.
By the way, Nestle seems to be the Monsanto of water. They want to own it all, and their CEO has stated that they have that right but public access to water is not a right.
Sure, some bottles say they’re from certain springs and so on. But usually they’re from purified (maybe) tap water near or at a place called whatever springs. A few companies have been forced to admit this.
This is not to detract from actual mineral water sources, such as pricier Volvic water, which a scientist has assured contains silica with the right type of suspension to leach aluminum from the brain.
Specific issues of disposable plastic bottled water toxins and their environmental impact
It’s not just BPA (bisphenol-A) in malleable plastics that disrupts hormones as an estrogen mimicker. A recent German study found traces of several other toxic chemicals in bottled water as well as more substantial amounts of different chemical endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Excerpted from a recent Natural News article by staff writer Ethan Huff:
The study’s published abstract explains that 13 of the 18 bottled water products tested exhibited “significant” anti-estrogenic activity, while 16 of the 18 samples were found to inhibit the body’s androgen receptors by an astounding 90 percent.
Additionally, the other 24,520 chemical traces besides DEHF were also identified as exhibiting antagonistic activity, which means that they, too, are detrimental to the body’s hormonal system. Here’s more (http://www.naturalnews.com).
Then there’s the issue of land fills, which is obviously an overburdened toxic hazard, and the Pacific’s plastic waste island.
Well, it’s not really an island the size of Texas or any other visible size. It’s an estimate of the amount of plastic strewn throughout the Northern Pacific known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the North Pacific Gyre (swirl; vortex).
It’s more like a stretch of plastic garbage stew, containing particles that demand close observation to be noticed. But even without the graphic drama, its ocean-polluting hazards are real.
Banning one-time-use plastic bottled water is a great idea despite the cries of “anti-free market” from those who refuse to separate dangerous, greedy corporations from individuals.
The most viable healthy solution would be plastics from hemp, which is another topic for another time.
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