Community Education & Connections
Parent Education
Reusable Water Bottle Campaign
RELEVANT LINKS Bottled Water Facts
Plastic Recycling Facts
Bottled Water - Problems & Solutions
This past September the Lower School eliminated all single serve disposable plastic water bottles from the McCarthey Campus Dining Hall, and asked parents to send reusable water bottles with their children to school. This change in Lower School policy has diverted 34,000 bottles annually (approximately 200 bottles daily) from the school’s waste stream.
Did you Know . . .
- Meeting America’s demand for bottled water requires over 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel 100,000 U.S. cars for a year.
- Eight out of 10 (22 billion) will end up in landfills.
- A 1999, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study concluded that bottled water is not necessarily any purer or any safer than city tap water.
- Petroleum based plastic takes more than 700 years to biodegrade.
- Less than 6% of our country’s plastic is recycled.
Teaching our students to reuse resources rather than rely on disposables is a great way for them to learn how individual actions can collectively make a significant difference.
