Your Voice | Remember the Year of Water?

I really enjoyed College senior Alexa Nicolas’ vital and brilliant column “Taking a Poop at Penn” in the Daily Pennsyalvanian of 10/4/12.

She wrote about the importance of finding a way for the Penn community to eliminate human waste without using precious water.

I do hope the employees at Penn’s Facilities and Real Estate Services really put their heads together and make her suggestions a reality on campus.

There are other things Penn can do to save water, here is one of them.

It is now generally agreed that the international bottled water industry is threatening the environment with its processing and bottling practices. This threatens safety and access to water supplies for everyone around the world. Inspection of bottled water is disorganized and does not rise to the level of inspection of municipal drinking water.

Water is a right for all, not to be bought and sold to those who can afford it.

2010 was the ‘Year of Water’ at Penn, and in a community forum that spring, I asked the administration what Penn was doing to eliminate bottled water from campus. I was told ‘We are working on it.’

Two years later, there is more bottled water on campus than ever before. It is sold in student cafeterias and in stores that lease from Penn. It is available at Penn-sponsored events, and cases are given out during move-in and move-out days. Caterers bring and supply bottles.

Removing bottled water from campus does not involve any advanced technology or tortured debate or studies or estimates or reports.

Just STOP.

Return the unused stock, cancel orders, develop clauses for leases and contracts that prohibit the purchase of bottled water, and stop serving it.

Present visiting lecturers with a Penn water bottle and point them to the nearest water fountain.

What is the problem? This could all be over in four days.

It is really essential that Penn eliminate, as far as possible, bottled water from campus. This would put the University in the forefront of the environmental movement, and make us a leader among the Ivies and higher ed all over the country.

Make it so, Penn.

Frances G. Hoenigswald
Van Pelt Library InterLibrary Loan Clerk

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.