Cash-Strapped University Shelling out Millions on Bottled Water

The New York Times reported that the University of California, which recently had to raise student fees and lay off workers because of budget cuts, has spent $2 million in the last couple of years on bottled water for its San Francisco and Berkeley campuses.

“With both cities boasting some of the nation’s highest-quality drinking water, critics see bottled water as a questionable expense that is bad for the environment,” Scott James writes.

A few years ago the city of San Francisco cut its bottled water contracts, saving over a half a million bucks a year. And while the UC budget is huge, about $20 billion, each dollar counts. As James reports:

Ariel Boone, a student senator at Berkeley, said, “Our funds are going to bottled water instead of keeping our libraries open,” and noted that just $15,000 was at stake recently to extend library hours during final exams.

Thankfully, most of the water the university is buying is not in single-use containers, but in 3-5 gallon jugs. But there is still an environmental impact, not just from the bottles themselves, but also the transport, packaging, and of course the mining of the water. “Tap water to both San Francisco and Berkeley is transported at little cost and pollution free by gravity, while bottled water arrives on trucks that burn fuel,” wrote James.

A movement is afoot at the school to decrease bottled water consumption and proponents say that use could drop 25 percent in the next year.