October, 14 2010, 04:01pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Christina Rossi, 617-447-2540 (Corporate Accountability International)
Casey Corr, 206-931-4783 (Seattle University)
Seattle University Goes Bottled Water Free
First university in Washington to buck the bottle
SEATTLE, Wash.
Today, Seattle University became the first college or university in the state of Washington to go bottled-water free. The university has removed bottled water from vending machines, concession stands, the campus bookstore, on-campus restaurants and catering.
The move was spurred by students concerned about the social and environmental impacts of bottled water. Seattle University students spent the last three years working in partnership with university administrators to eliminate bottled water campuswide.
Students worked with Corporate Accountability International's Think Outside the Bottle campaign, a national public education and action campaign challenging bottled water industry abuses and galvanizing support for strong public water systems. Bottled water is associated with excessive energy consumption and needless waste.
"As a Seattle University alum I'm proud of the steps students and staff have taken to pass this important resolution," said Kelle Louaillier, executive director of Boston-based Corporate Accountability International. "By going bottled water free on campus, the university is setting an example for the state of Washington and other institutions to take similar steps, particularly other Jesuit universities."
The bottled-water initiative follows a number of sustainability initiatives by the university, which in 2008 was recognized as Washington State's "greenest campus," and reflects steps also taken by the City of Seattle. The city passed a resolution in March 2008 to phase out city use of bottled water under the leadership of former Mayor Greg Nickels. The city's resolution paved the way for more than 100 cities across the country to take action and a similar resolution to be passed through the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Seattle University joins six other campuses nationally, including Brown and Tufts University, in taking action on bottled water campus wide. However, SU has been unique in its devotion to connecting the issue of bottled water to the broader global context; one in six people worldwide now go without safe drinking water.
The university has partnered with Corporate Accountability International to provide discounted reusable water bottles on campus. A portion of sales benefit the efforts of the university's chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to provide clean tap water to the people of Haiti.
"We're a Jesuit institution and ecological justice is a continuing part of the Jesuit heritage and mission," said Tim Leary, executive vice president. "I'm pleased we could go forward with a great idea brought to us by students who embrace our mission and take another step in our commitment to sustainability."
The bottled-water initiative began in 2008 when students approached university leadership with the idea.
"As a student I'm proud to be part of a larger national movement that is moving us beyond deceptive marketing and on to long-term solutions to make sure all people continue to have access to clean, safe drinking water for generations to come," said SU student Spencer Black, co-founder of the Natural Leaders for Social Justice student club that helped launch the program.
The university lists the following as motivation for its actions:
* Inform the community about the misleading marketing the bottled water industry employs;
* Promote Seattle's high quality tap water;
* Ensure water is seen as a human right and not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit; and
* Reduce the university's greenhouse gas emissions.
Not only can bottled water extraction have a significant impact on watersheds, producing bottled water is energy intensive -- ounce for ounce, it takes 2,000 times as much energy to produce bottled water as tap water. Additionally, the energy used to produce and distribute bottled water requires the equivalent of as much as 54 million barrels of oil a year. Throw in the billions of disposable plastic bottles going into the waste stream, and you wind-up with an elephantine environmental footprint.
This is not to mention the impact of misleading marketing about public water systems. Though bottled water is less regulated than the tap and nearly half of the bottled water sold comes from the same source, the industry has long marketed it as somehow better while providing no evidence to support its claims. The effect over time has been diminishing public confidence in tap water (which is only now being promoted thanks to public education campaigns like Think Outside the Bottle). As public confidence has waned, so too has the political will to adequately support public water infrastructure, which now faces a $22 billion annual funding shortfall.
For more information about Seattle University's action to eliminate bottled water spending click here.
Learn about Seattle University's sustainability initiatives.
LATEST NEWS
Biden Urged to 'Hold the Line' Against For-Profit Medicare Advantage Industry
"Do not let them bully you," said Alex Lawson of Social Security Works. "Corporate insurers are holding the country's health hostage and demanding bags of cash."
Mar 28, 2024
Opponents of healthcare privatization gathered at the White House on Thursday to send President Joe Biden a message from tens of thousands of Americans: "Do not give in to corporate insurers."
With the Biden administration set to unveil its final payment rate for privatized Medicare Advantage (MA) plans on April 1, Alex Lawson of Social Security Works and Brittany Shannahan of Public Citizen delivered around 28,000 petition signatures to the White House imploring Biden to "reduce MA rates to a level commensurate with traditional Medicare and recoup all overpayments."
"Do not let them bully you," Lawson said during a livestream in front of the White House on Thursday. "Corporate insurers are holding the country's health hostage and demanding bags of cash."
Medicare Advantage is a privately run program funded by the federal government, and the major for-profit insurers that dominate the MA industry are notorious for denying patients necessary care and overbilling the government by making patients appear sicker than they are—a practice known as "upcoding."
One recent study estimated that Medicare Advantage plans overcharge U.S. taxpayers to the tune of $140 billion per year, which would be enough to zero out Medicare Part B premiums.
"Medicare is under threat from greedy corporations that are more focused on profit than providing patient care," said Brittany Shannahan, a Medicare for All organizer. "This is a threat to Medicare. This should be on campaign ads."
The Biden administration is expected to propose a 3.7% payment increase for Medicare Advantage in 2025. More than 30,000 people have submitted comments opposing that rate, according to Social Security Works.
Insurers, a powerful lobbying force in Washington, D.C., are also pushing back on the administration's plan—demanding that they receive more, not less, government money.
"Taking our money and denying our care: That's their business model," Lawson said Thursday.
Lawson and Shannahan welcomed the Biden administration's recent efforts to curb Medicare Advantage overbilling and other abuses.
Survey results released earlier this week by Data for Progress show that the Biden administration's efforts to curtail MA plans' wrongful care denials and overbilling are overwhelmingly popular across party lines.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Just Care USA president Diane Archer noted that "since its inception," MA has "cost the Medicare program more per enrollee than traditional Medicare" even as it imposes "obstacles to care that don't exist for people in traditional Medicare, including burdensome prior authorization requirements and restricted physician and hospital networks."
"Our government is spending more and enrollees are too often getting fewer Medicare benefits than they would in traditional Medicare," Archer wrote.
In their remarks in front of the White House on Thursday, Shannahan and Lawson urged the Biden administration to "hold the line" and take bolder action to rein in Medicare Advantage plans, which now cover half of all eligible Medicare beneficiaries.
"We need to see more," said Shannahan. "We know that Medicare Advantage insurers are throwing around cash trying to make sure that they can continue to exploit their patients undetected and unchecked."
Carmen Rhodes, senior adviser and programs director at Be A Hero—a group founded by the late Medicare for All champion Ady Barkan—wrote in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Thursday that the Biden administration must hold Medicare Advantage plans "accountable for their greed, not give them a raise."
"Hundreds of our grassroots supporters have shared their painful stories of being delayed or denied care by faceless, cruel insurance companies," Rhodes wrote. "Others reveal feeling tricked or even forced onto a Medicare Advantage plan and then being stuck in the 'Hotel California.' Their heartbreaking stories called Ady and now call all of us to take action."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Federal Court Rules Racist Florida Voting Map Backed by DeSantis Can Remain for 2024 Election
“This is not only disappointing, but it sets a perilous precedent," said Ellen Freidin, CEO of FairDistricts NOW.
Mar 28, 2024
A federal three-judge panel unanimously ruled on Wednesday that Florida's congressional map may remain after it was challenged by former Rep. Al Lawson and the watchdog group Common Cause.
Lawson is a black Democrat whose district was dismantled when the map was created in 2022. Lawson and Common Cause alleged that the map was discriminatory against Black voters, but the federal court rejected those claims. Two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by Republican presidents.
“After clearly recognizing Florida’s history of racial discrimination, the court ignored its most recent iteration, greenlighting legislative adoption of the Governor’s racially motivated map,” says @CommonCauseFL’s Amy Keith, on the discriminatory map ruling.
— Common Cause (@CommonCause) March 28, 2024
The plaintiffs argued that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was acting with racial animus when he called for Lawson's district to be dismantled. The court ruled that even if DeSantis was acting with racial animus, the plaintiffs couldn't prove the Legislature was when it created the map.
"This is not only disappointing, but it sets a perilous precedent. The court is saying that a state legislature can erase a performing Black district for political gain as long as it can blame the governor for coming up with the racist scheme in the first place," said Ellen Freidin, CEO of FairDistricts NOW. "The ultimate result permits legislators to conspire with the governor to keep themselves and their party in power while remaining insulated from the law."
A Florida judge had ruled the map was unconstitutional in 2022 because "it diminishes African Americans' ability to elect candidates of their choice."
One of the judges on the federal court panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan, did say he believed DeSantis had racist reasoning behind his actions.
"I do not think that Governor DeSantis harbors personal racial animus toward Black voters," Jordan wrote. "But I do believe that he used race impermissibly as a means to achieve ends (including partisan advantage) that he cannot admit to."
Keep ReadingShow Less
US Leads Charge as Surge of Oil and Gas Projects Threaten Hope for Livable Planet
"The science is clear: No new oil and gas fields, or the planet gets pushed past what it can handle," said one analyst.
Mar 28, 2024
Fossil fuel-producing countries late last year pledged to "transition away from fossil fuels," but a report on new energy projects shows that with the United States leading the way in continuing to extract oil and gas, governments' true views on renewable energy is closer to a statement by a Saudi oil executive Amin Nasser earlier this month.
"We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas," the CEO of Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, said at an energy conference in Houston.
A new report published Wednesday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) suggests the U.S. in particular has abandoned any plans to adhere to warnings from climate scientists and the International Energy Agency (IEA), which said in 2021 that new oil and gas infrastructure has no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C.
Despite the stark warning, last year at least 20 oil and gas fields worldwide reached "final investment decision," the point at which companies decide to move ahead with construction and development. Those approvals paved the way for the extraction of 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe).
By the end of the decade, companies aim to sanction nearly four times that amount, producing 31.2 billion boe from 64 oil and gas fields.
The U.S. led the way in approving new oil and gas projects over the past two years, GEM's analysis found.
An analysis by Carbon Brief of GEM's findings shows that burning all the oil and gas from newly discovered fields and approved projects would emit at least 14.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
"This is equivalent to more than one-third of the CO2 emissions from global energy use in 2022, or all the emissions from burning oil that year," said Carbon Brief.
GEM noted in its analysis that oil companies and the policymakers who continue to support their planet-heating activities have come up with numerous "extraction justifications" even as the IEA has been clear that new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with avoiding catastrophic planetary heating.
The report notes that U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) "supported ConocoPhillips' Willow oil field, arguing that the Alaskan oil and gas industry has a 'better environmental track record,' and not approving the project 'impoverish[es] Alaska Natives and blame[s] them for changes in the climate that they did not cause.'"
Carbon Brief reported that oil executives have claimed they are powerless to stop extracting fossil fuels since demand for oil and gas exists for people's energy needs, with ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods tellingFortune last month that members of the public "aren't willing to spend the money" on renewable energy sources.
A poll by Pew Research Center last year found 67% of Americans supported the development of alternative energy sources. Another recent survey by Eligo Energy showed that 65% of U.S. consumers were willing to pay more for renewable energy.
"Oil and gas producers have given all kinds of reasons for continuing to discover and develop new fields, but none of these hold water," said Scott Zimmerman, project manager for the Global Oil and Gas Extraction Tracker at GEM. "The science is clear: No new oil and gas fields, or the planet gets pushed past what it can handle."
Climate scientist and writer Bill McGuire summarized the viewpoint of oil and gas executives and pro-fossil fuel lawmakers: "Climate emergency? What climate emergency?"
The continued development of new oil and gas fields, he added, amounts to "pure insanity."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular