University of California, Berkeley
This campaign made possible with support from TGIF

College of Engineering takes back the tap.

Tap water activists Alison Powell (left) and Sylvia Bierhuis, at their water station in 201 McLaughlin, are doing their part to minimize the College of Engineering's environmental footprint.

Got water? You bet!
Plenty of clean, delicious H2O flows to faucets and spigots throughout the UC Berkeley campus every day, sourced from Sierra Nevada snowmelt and processed by East Bay Municipal Utility District. But the campus still consumes more than 2 million plastic beverage containers, only half of which get recycled, each year.

The College of Engineering Dean's Office is one of many departments to join the "I ♥ Tap Water" campaign, sponsored by four campus units and funded by the Green Initiative Fund. The goal is to convince the campus community that tap water is better than bottled for our health and the environment.

"Since we're the College of Engineering, this is the kind of thing we should be doing every day," says Alison Powell, explaining how she and colleague Sylvia Bierhuis got involved. Both are development associates, certified meeting planners and self-confessed "big personalities" who are enlisting their colleagues to join them in hydrating offices and meetings with tap water to conserve resources and minimize waste.

"We spend $1.25 per bottle for beverages at events," Bierhuis says. "And you end up with all this waste because people drink half the bottle and leave it on the table." She is now using the kitchen sink to fill 60-ounce water pitchers, provided by a Health*Matters initiative targeting campus event planners, and setting out compostable cups rather than rows of bottled water. "If you cut up an orange in there," she adds, "it's even better!"

Story and photo by Patti Meagher, Publications Director, Engineering.