You might not know this but when you decide to go bottled water free, you get a lot of criticism from big corporations. More specifically, bottled water companies, who by the way love to send tonnes of letters about why you need to reconsider your decision. So at uOttawa we get lots of these letters. Some nice, some bad, some threatening, some completely incomprehensible. I thought I would let everyone see what it is like when we get one of these letters and how I like to handle them. I personally believe that water should never be denied to people how need it. I is essential to our lives and to our way of life. And don't get me wrong, I do believe that there is a time and place for bottled water and that it does have some very important and very critical applications. I understand big corporations need to eek out a living as well, but sometimes you have to draw a line. As a recovering science student, one of the things I really hate is when people toss a study at you and say...

Have you ever drunk from one of the water fountains on campus? Did it look like this? Have you ever seen the newer fountains that have a spout that can fill up a water bottle, that are accessible, that are clean, and have cold water? That’s what I’m talking about. In the summer of 2008 and 2009, water fountain assessments were completed in order to find out the state of water fountains on our campus. Main reason being: the better fountain infrastructure we have, the more people will drink from it instead of buying bottled water. uOttawa, in its efforts to improve its status as a green university and also to improve the student experience, put aside $150,000 over two years to improve water fountain infrastructure based on the recommendations from the two reports from the summer assessments. One of the major recommendations this year was to put water fountains near food service locations like the cafeteria in SITE and UCU, since this is where most bottled water is sold. The idea is that ...