In celebration of RecycleMania, Grassroots has declared this week (the week of 3/13) Water Week! The week’s focus is to cut down on the unnecessary use of bottled water and to switch to the much more planet friendly option of refilling a reusable bottle to quench our thirst. Every day this week, you will find students in Wilson Commons holding a water taste test to see who can tell the difference between tap and bottled water. They will also be giving away raffle tickets for Brita water filtration systems. Then, on Saturday from 12:00 – 6:00 p.m. there will be a Water Week event held in Hirst Lounge. There will be more water taste-testing, tabling, t-shirt silk screening, water bottle decorating, a movie screening and more. Come join in on the fun!
Luckily at UR, using our reusable water bottles is convenient at the many water bottle refill stations throughout campus. Not convinced that drinking bottled water is unnecessary and wasteful? Check out Tapped, the movie, and you might just change your mind.
So how are we scoring in RecycleMania now? We are as strong as the great apes in the Gorilla Prize, or the competition that looks at the highest gross tonnage of recyclables. Out of 362 competing schools, we are in 22nd place beating our friends at RIT, as well as John Hopkins, Princeton, and Emory. Out of the 23 schools in New York we are second only to Cornell! We are also doing well in the Per Capita contest outranking Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Rice with a score of 43 out of 362. Even in the Grand Champion contest where we rank in at 128 out of 285, we are still beating Princeton, Stanford, and Trinity. Let’s keep up the good work and continue our efforts to reduce, reuse, and (of course) recycle!!
