Bottled water is one of the biggest threat to our environment. Let us stop using bottled water and let us educate our students also to avoid it always. We can carry our own water bottles and fill from water sources. read article below, it is for the National Parks in USA but equally applicable to us also ... In USA, the bottled water manufacturers are lobbying the government to stop any law banning bottled water!!
regards Guru *Why Ban Plastic Water Bottles in National Parks?* The United States' national parks are popular. So popular, in fact, that the National Park Service is having significant challenges dealing with the waste generated by the hundreds of millions of people that make their way through 85 million acres of national park land every year. In 2015, more than 305 million people visited <https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/news/release.htm?id=1775> national parks, easily eclipsing the all-time visitation record that the National Park Service recorded in 2014. Around 365 of 409 parks recorded record visitation numbers, and park officials see no reason to believe this trend will not continue. Three hundred million people produce a lot of waste: over 100 million pounds per year <https://www.npca.org/articles/1292-study-reveals-lack-of-awareness-of-waste-challenges-facing-us-national>, much of which consists of single-use plastic water bottles. To the companies that bottle and sell water, often at over 2,000 times the cost of tap water <http://www.businessinsider.com/bottled-water-costs-2000x-more-than-tap-2013-7>, those three hundred million people represent hundreds of millions of opportunities to sell their product and, at an average of $1.50 per bottle, billions of dollars in revenue. In the first half of this decade, national parks started to take proactive steps to address the challenges that come along with more visitors, more waste and more impact to the landscape and wildlife. Park service officials were finding that one of the largest sources of trash in the parks was single-use plastic water bottles. <http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/park-plastic-bottle-bans-work-but-remain-few-and-far-between.html> For a decade, Gina Macllwraith lived and worked in many of this country's national parks, including Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Her job was to make the parks more sustainable for the companies that provide food and lodging and other services to park visitors. a huge part of the waste stream," Macllwraith said. "There are so many bottles it's ridiculous. It is a major challenge and it makes me mad that [IBWA is] trying to prevent parks from dealing with it." In the parks where Macllwraith worked, they eliminated single-use plastic water bottles and instead provided water stations and extremely affordable reusable bottles for visitors. "We made sure we had a wide variety of price points so it wasn't prohibitive to people to buy a reusable container. We made it to be as cheap as buying a disposable bottle of water," she said. Zion National Park in Utah was the first to ban single-use plastic water bottles <https://www.nps.gov/sustainability/parks/downloads/GPP%20Success_ZION_bottles_4_17_12.pdf>, followed shortly by Grand Canyon National Park. Twenty others soon followed. And, according to National Park Service data, the bans worked. <http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/park-plastic-bottle-bans-work-but-remain-few-and-far-between.html> In Arches and Canyonlands National Park in Utah officials saw a 15 percent reduction in their total waste stream and a 25 percent reduction in the amount of material they had to haul to be recycled. In Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona they saw a 20 percent reduction in their waste stream and a 30 percent reduction in their recycling load and in Saguaro National Park they had a 15 percent total waste reduction and a 40 percent reduction in their recycling load. A recent study <https://www.npca.org/articles/1292-study-reveals-lack-of-awareness-of-waste-challenges-facing-us-national> by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), found that more than 35 percent of park visitors drink from disposable water bottles. And nearly almost 80 percent of visitors would support the removal of single-use water bottles in national parks if it would significantly help reduce waste. rest of the article is available on http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38402-nestle-and-coca-cola-attempt-to-block-national-parks-from-banning-bottled-water-sales IT for Change, Bengaluru www.ITforChange.net -- EnglishSTF Link: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/englishstf -- *For doubts on Ubuntu and other public software, visit http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/en/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions **Are you using pirated software? Use Sarvajanika Tantramsha, see http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/en/index.php/Public_Software ಸಾರ್ವಜನಿಕ ಇಲಾಖೆಗೆ ಸಾರ್ವಜನಿಕ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶ ***If a teacher wants to join STF-read http://karnatakaeducation.org.in/KOER/en/index.php/Become_a_STF_groups_member --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "EnglishSTF" group. 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