Every year, the United States consumes over 30 billion plastic water bottles. Eight out of ten of these bottles end up in landfills or incinerators after they are used. The waste caused by the manufacture and disposal of this product creates an extreme and lasting environmental impact that our planet cannot continue to sustain.
The concept of packaging and selling a natural resource that is as readily available to us as clean water does not make sense. In the United States we are fortunate enough to not have to struggle to find safe drinking water, but we are continuously led to believe that expensive non-reusable containers of water are somehow cleaner or better than the water from the tap.
The TAP Initiative, Take Away Plastic, is a campaign that aims to eliminate bottled water usage on a college campus. The campaign includes a website (www.takeawayplastic.com), a book of statistics about the environmental impact of plastic bottles, a motion infographic video, and also a campus installation. Take Away Plastic day occurred on March 4th at Notre Dame, where an installation of 1000 empty plastic bottles on South Quad demonstrated the massive amount of waste generated by Americans in two thirds of a second. In addition to making an impact on the Notre Dame campus, my campaign functions as a replicable system that can be implemented at other universities and communities throughout the country. With a customizable template, this campaign is a tool that can be used by activist environmental groups at schools and communities interested in making a change.
