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Colleges and Bottled Water: When can you ban bans?
Last week, the conservative student group at St. Ben’s handed out free bottled water in protest against the College’s recent ban of the sale of bottled water on campus.
Whenever some organization bans something there is usually push back.
Last year, when Macalester College (which also has a ban on bottled water) enacted a policy banning tobacco use within 25 feet of all entrances, one student sat outside the student center, advertising “Free cigarettes! Get your free cigarettes!” Certain conservative factions have demonstrated against the federal government’s phase-out of incandescent light bulbs.
At the heart of each protest is a reaction against perceived government (whether of the college or the United States) action limiting consumer choice.
Many of the individuals who took up these demonstrations would likely say that regulation of this kind is never, or hardly ever, justified. Of course, very few people would say that a ban of the sale of cocaine, or the ban on the exchange of money for sex is unjustified, despite that it is also a limitation consumer choice.
Where is that line, then? When is a ban acceptable? An approach that many might be able to agree upon is that a ban must be “democratic.” But even that perspective is tricky. If 60% support and 40% oppose, is that democratic? If 20% actively support and 80% are neutral, is that democratic? In practice, the democratic process is messy and ugly thing.
Let’s get back to the bottled water ban. I will not provide a litany of the negative social effects of bottled water, but three factoids to keep in mind: bottled water is 4,000 times as expensive as tap water, 80% of one-time use water bottles end up in landfills and, increasingly, in rivers and oceans, and a fifth of bottled water sold contains higher levels of chemical contaminants than tap water.
Motivated by these kinds of concerns, students at St. Benedict collected 900 faculty and student signatures, about 40% of the total, in support of the ban.
At Macalester, a survey of students found that nearly 75% would support a ban, and also conducted an analysis of bottled water sales on campus to estimate the effect of a ban. Students at both colleges also held student forums on bottled water, discussed the proposal with student organizations, and had the support of members of the administration.
Far from the well-worn rhetoric of the government enacting repressive regulation on the average, hard-working student-citizen, the bottled water bans in these microcosmic cases were the result of student groups’, and often the majority of their peers, attempts to improve the well-being of their campus community and communities around the world.
Were these processes “democratic” enough? Are there better ways to address the negative global effects of a local consumer choice? People will say yes and people will say no to both questions. It is clear that you cannot ban all bans, and instead must strive towards that elusive ideal democratic process.
Posted in News & Notes | Related Topics: Higher Education Regulation Sustainability Progressive Community
6 Comments
September 22, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Great job reporting on the “politics” of proposing and implementing a ban (or other new policy) on a college campus. The arguments for banning bottled water and soft drinks are definitely convincing. Hopefully, such insightful reports will continue to be posted at Minnesota 20-20.
September 22, 2011 at 10:11 am
“RealistII,” there are drinking fountains all over the St. Ben’s campus which dispense high quality water free of charge to St. Ben’s students, and plenty of water faucets for filling students’ own water bottles with the same high quality water. However, if they insist on creating trash with every few ounces of water they consume, nobody’s stopping them from buying bottled water elsewhere and bringing it along. The ban is on SELLING it on campus. Given that, you’ve got a great point about soft drinks in throw-away bottles: those should probably be banned from on-campus sales, too. They can get it from fountains in the dining rooms, or buy it elsewhere.
The bottled beverage industry has done a masterful job of convincing Americans that their tap water—generally the safest in the world—is unfit to drink. Bottled water drinkers have convinced themselves that millions of plastic bottles they throw away DAILY are no big deal. The recycling rate for plastic bottles is pathetically low—well under 20%.
If you prefer paying 1000x the cost of tap water for your next few seconds of hydration, nobody’s stopping you, “RealistII,” even on the St. Ben’s campus—just bring your own. Unfortunately, the bottle it comes in, the fuel expended in bringing it to you, the energy involved in making the bottle, and the pollution generated in getting rid of it are even more expensive, both to you and the rest of society.
Here’s a great article about all this. A realist should appreciate it!
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/climate411/91/bottles-bottles-everywhere.html
September 22, 2011 at 9:57 am
The College and group did take into account alternatives that is why they placed water bottle refill stations throughout campus to encourage students to refill a reusable waterbottle instead of having all the bottled water bottles being thrown away.
September 22, 2011 at 9:51 am
It sounds as though both colleges did their best to educate students on the folly of paying over $2 for the few pennies worth of safe water they could receive from the tap in their kitchens while ending their contribution to bottled water’s bad environmental effects.
It may have something to do with Macalester students being from a liberal city (and families) and the conservative students from a conservative part of Minnesota.
September 22, 2011 at 9:20 am
A ban on bottled water makes no sense. So what does it leave for alternatives - Coke and Pepsi? I can’t see where bottled water should be treated any different than Coke - it’s just another soft drink. All the negatives listed for bottled water are also true for common soft drinks and they have the added bonus of damaging ones health with sugar or chemical sugar substitutes. If these activists were thinking clearly, they’d push for a ban on all soft drinks that aren’t a derivative of a naturally occurring substance - fruit juice for example. And why not require a deposit to assure the bottles get returned and recycle properly?
Tim Bonham says:
September 22, 2011 at 4:05 pm
“very few people would say that a ban of the sale of cocaine…”
Where is the evidence for this assertion? Nearly every study I have seen shows most Americans think the War on Drugs is a failure (67%) and that most drugs should be legalized or decriminalized. Up to 56% for marijuana, for example.
So why do you say “very few people”?
(For that matter, your other example, on legalized prostitution, recent polls show 35-46% of people support that, too.)