WHAT IS TAP THE HILLTOP?
Plastic water bottles always end up recycled, right? Not quite. Did you know that out of the 60 million plastic water bottles used every day in the US, only 23% of those actually get recycled? The rest are sent to landfills or swept up into our rivers, streams, and oceans. That’s why Students for Sustainability and Green Ambassadors at St. Edward’s University came together to launch Tap the Hilltop as a part of Food and Water Watch’s national campaign to promote positive initiatives about water awareness and plastic water bottle consumption.
OUR GOAL
Tap the Hilltop wants to transform SEU into a “bottled water-free campus.” We know it’s an ambitious goal and we need YOUR help to make that happen. We want to decrease the sale of bottled water on campus by increasing education of the harmful environmental and health repercussions of plastic water bottle consumption.
WHAT WE’VE DONE SO FAR
To gauge interest within the SEU community for this kind of campaign, we organized a couple of events. The Tap the Hilltop team hosted a screening of the film, Tapped, which documents the role of the bottled water industry and its effects on our health, climate change, pollution, as well as our reliance on oil. We also hosted a water taste test to see if students could really distinguish the difference between tap water and bottled water. Guess what? More people favored the taste of tap water to bottled water, and many couldn’t even tell the difference!
WHAT’S NEXT
We want everyone to be engaged! Tap the Hilltop has been working hard on the campaign. An art installation during Earth Week, more film screenings, talks, and activities are already in the works. Like the campaign page on Facebook to stay tuned.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO BE PART OF THE MOVEMENT
The movement to protect our precious water resources NEEDS you! Even the simple act of choosing tap water over bottled water goes a long way towards ensuring that everyone has access to safe, clean, affordable water. By getting involved in our Tap the Hilltop campaign, you too can show your support for these vital systems and educate your colleagues, classmates, and friends on how their habits affect the world around them.
We want YOU to join in! For anyone who is interested in learning more about this campaign, feel free to stop by our meetings held every Tuesday in Ragsdale’s Kresege Room (in the dining hall by the conveyor belt), contact Mary Katherine Belknap or Christine Lacayo and like us on Facebook!
-Christine Lacayo MSEM ’16
Sustainability Graduate Assistant