The winner of a contest to encourage tap-water drinking will win $1,500.

Contest 'Taps' Students' Creativity

Group Wants To Reduce Bottled Water On Campus

By: James White

Posted: 3/21/08

Students will have the opportunity to compete for $2,000 in prizes by creating a short video encouraging the use of tap, rather than bottled, water.

The competition, dubbed "I Love Tap Water," is sponsored by the Food and Water Watch, a non-profit organization with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Berlin, Germany. The group's mission is to ensure that food and water supplies are safe and affordable through grassroots advocacy.

The contest runs until April 14. The 1st-place winner will receive $1,500 prize and the 2nd-place winner will receive $500.

They're trying to reduce the amount of bottled water used on college campuses - through the video contest, which will help raise awareness.

"The videos will be about supporting safe, clean and affordable water," said Annie Weinberg, the national organizer for Take Back The Tap.

She added that the videos, between one and two minutes in length, should address common myths and misunderstandings about the safety and environmental consequences of bottled water.

The videos will be judged by a panel including actor Alec Baldwin and will be viewable nationally from the Food and Water Watch's Web site.

Weinberg said that her group is particularly concerned with reaching people in areas of the country that have been hit hard by water shortages in recent years, such as the Southwest, the Atlanta area, and the Great Lakes region.

Weinberg added that she also hopes to see existing tap water infrastructures more frequently maintained and upgraded.

"Part of what we're saying is that if people are concerned about their tap water, that doesn't mean that they should turn to bottled water," she said.

Evan Schickel, a 10th-semester mechanical engineering major, said that he was aware of the environmental damage caused by the extraction, bottling and transportation of bottled water, but admitted he found it had its advantages.

"I do consume bottled water, but not that much," he said. "I'd rather drink tap water, but sometimes it's convenient to have portable water."

Schickel said the contest videos might convince him to cut back on bottled water, but added that the contest organizers face an uphill battle with the general public.

"I'd be less prone to buy a bottle of water," he said. "But again, we're America, and we're just all about convenience."

According to figures release by Take Back The Tap, bottled water was an $11 billion industry in 2006.

Weinberg hopes to change those figures.

"There's this idea that bottled water is safer and healthier," she said. "And that's not the case. The bottled water industry is one of the most loosely regulated in the country."

She pointed out that while tap water quality was subject to strict legislation and monitoring by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, bottled water is inspector by only a single employee at the Food and Drug Administration.

Further, she added, public drinking water often contains beneficial compounds, such as fluoride, and is vastly cheaper than bottled water.

"Water is a basic public service," she said. "We believe that safe water should be available to everybody."

Contact James White at James.White@UConn.edu.