Our own Alex D'Urso in Inside Higher Ed

Our own Alex D'Urso was featured in a story on plastic water bottle reduction in Inside Higher Ed earlier this year. For some reason, I don't think we ever posted it. Well, here is the opening. You can read the rest at the first link.

Habits die hard.

“A concern for some people is they can’t imagine what they would do without bottled water,” said Alexandra D’Urso, a Ph.D. student in curriculum and instruction at Pennsylvania State University who’s involved with a new campaign to ban bottled water on campus. “It’s hard to believe that we’ve gone from a point 15 years ago when no one carried a plastic water bottle, that now no one can imagine how we would live without them.”

To borrow from John Lennon, imagine. That’s what student and faculty activists are asking on a number of college campuses where efforts to cut down on the use of bottled water, or restrict its sale -- all for sustainability’s sake -- are gaining momentum.

And on that last point, I've been talking to people at Food and Water Watch and the momentum is really gaining. This October 14th, we'll be part of a Take Back the Tap day of action on which students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities around the U.S. will be lobbying their institutions to drop single-use bottles. As our own Jared pointed out last semester - Refill! Not Landfill! And as Alex said, it is hard to believe that we've gotten to this point.

This issue connects to my last post - that there are a web of considerations in our commodity production and purchasing decisions that have simply been ruled out of bounds by narrow profit interests. It is high time to claim and act upon virtues that recognize and promote broader and better interests.