Bottled Water haunts me. In spite of not drinking them, I see them littering the streets or thrown in the garbage all over uOttawa even though recycling stations are becoming a dominant feature in our campus landscape.
We offer students free reusable water bottles hoping they will make the switch [they’re available at the SFUO Sustainability Centre], we have the Freestore which offers up an assortment of options from stainless steel water bottles, to leftovers from the 101 week kits, to plastic and glass cups you could store in your bag and use during class lectures, and there are even Brita pitchers at the Freestore that you could take home with you to eliminate your consumption at home.
Upon entering filterforgood.ca, one is bombarded with messages about how you can reduce your environmental impact by purchasing one filter that can replace 300 water bottles. I personally trust in Ottawa’s public water systems because of the surplus of research I have completed on their standards and do not own a Brita filter. But if you’re easing off the bottled water onto tap water, this is a great start!
While working at the freestore and Dump n’ Run, we found lots of Brita pitchers and just as many filters that had been abandoned. We held onto them due to our uncertainty of their ability to be recycled which seemed to be the downfall of the Brita system. Not impressed, I continued to just fill pitchers with city water UNTIL Brigitte discovered that Brita will recycle the filters if you ship three of them to this company. They even give you a link to a prepaid postage label on their website.
Well, being the amazing Office of Campus Sustainability that we are, we decided to top them. Bring your filters to the freestore at 647 King Edward Ave and we will do it for you. You know, in case you don’t have a printer because you can’t afford ink (I know I can’t) or you have an irrational fear of the big red post boxes.
photo credit - jonathan rausseo