A college in Canada is taking steps to ban the bottle and stay hydrated using a new product called Hydration Station.

The water-dispensing device is a unique system/filling station for re-usable bottles. The College is the first facility in Canada to have a working unit. The hydration station is manufactured by the Haws Corporation and is sold in Canada through Dobbin Sales.

The hydration station processes tap water into pure water using state-of-the-art filtration technologies, which can be substituted whenever a specification calls for a drinking fountain. Before water reaches the nozzle, it runs through an NSF-certified filter to remove sediment, chlorine taste and odour. The system provides a hygienic, safe source for refilling personal re-usable bottles says Phil Kelly, Dobbin Sales.

Georgian College’s commitment to environmental sustainability has been underscored by the recent installation of a hydration station at the Barrie Campus as a pilot project.

“The hydration station provides an excellent alternative to plastic water bottles,” he said. “The fact that Georgian College is the first facility in Canada to adopt this technology says a great deal about its dedication to a ‘green’ community.”

The hydration station fulfills the College’s environmental sustainable directive, says Dianne Corrigan, Environmental Sustainability Co-ordinator.

“Georgian’s Physical Resources department and the Environmental Sustainability Committee are continually looking for ways to embed environmental sustainability into the College’s day-to-day operations,” she said. “The hydration station is the perfect answer to our mandate, which includes finding ways to diminish our environmental impact and incorporate ‘green’ living into corporate culture.”

The hydration station was acquired by Physical Resources in response to a request to reduce the use of plastic bottles on campus. The unit, which is located on the third floor of the C Building at the Barrie Campus across from Room C315, was generously donated to the College by the Haws Corporation. There is a potential for more than 30 units College-wide when fully implemented.

For more information on environmental sustainability initiatives at Georgian College, visit http://www.georgianc.on.ca/environment/.

[via Georgian News]

Fact or Fiction:

Drinking out of a plastic water bottle left in a hot car can lead to cancer?

That’s the buzz on the Internet.  It’s convient, fresh and clean.

Or is it?

“The problem with water bottles is, it’s made of plastic,” said Dr. Ravi Patel with Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center. ”And there’s different kinds of plastic. Plastics actually release different chemicals in different situations.”

Dr. Patel, founder of the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center, says heat can release cancer-causing toxins, which leak from plastic into water and even food.

There are two chemicals he says pose the biggest threat.

“Dioxin and another one,  BPA, Bisphenol A, These two products are connected to plastics and that has been associated with a whole host of health issues including birth defects, cancer. A variety of things,” said Dr. Patel.

17News contacted Dr. Patel after receiving an email that suggested leaving bottled water in your car is very dangerous. The email said plastic water bottles have been been identified as the most common cause of high levels of dioxin in breast cancer tissue. (more…)

A recent article on Newsday.com noted that many states are beginning to cut back on bottled water and help the environment by reducing waste.

The New York City Council called for an end to bottled water purchases for city offices and city-sponsored events last June, and numerous restaurants and cultural venues have followed suit.

“Bottled water is wasteful and requires large amounts of energy to bottle and transport,” NY Gov. David Paterson said. More than 450 million gallons of oil per year are used to transport water from bottling plants to stores, and plastic water bottle manufacturing uses 17 million barrels of oil, he said.

Four billion pounds of water bottles end up in landfills or incinerators in New York annually, Paterson said. That number should decline when the state’s new 5-cent deposit on water bottles takes effect June 1.

“Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars to ensure that we have clean drinking water supplies,” Paterson said. “If we are going to make such significant investments, we should reap the benefits and use that water.”

Statehouses target bottled water to reduce waste [via Newsday.com]

We all know bottled water is an environmental no-no because it generates plastic and because energy is required to ship it around, but is it any healthier?  Many people feel guilty about it, but want to make sure they’re not drinking a bunch of chemicals.

Sarah Schmidt from Mother Nature Network wrote a great response to this question in a recent post:

“There’s really no reason to think bottled water is healthier or more pure than tap. In fact, recent testing suggests that bottled water is, in the case of some brands, just tap water poured into plastic. Beverage companies aren’t required to disclose the origins of their water, or the results of any in-house testing they do for contaminants (except in California). That means that they can pretty much fill those resource-and-energy-hogging plastic bottles with any old H20, slap a picture of a mountain on it, and charge you an arm and a leg for it. The Environmental Working Group just tested 10 brands of bottled water and found everything from arsenic to chlorine to fertilizer residue in them. Some brands were completely indistinguishable from municipal supplies, and contained byproducts of the disinfectants used in tap water. Funny thing, that.

The bottled water industry, not surprisingly, contends that a study of 10 brands is not big enough to represent the market as a whole, but the fact is that there’s no law preventing companies from bottling ordinary tap water and selling it as something more special. Your tap water may be just as good as bottled water—and it’s literally 1,900 times cheaper on average. If you want to make sure you’re drinking the purest water possible, you’re better off investing in one of the dozens of kinds of filters on the market. And yeah, we know, sometimes you’re away from home, you’re thirsty, you forgot your trusty reusable bottle, and you find public drinking fountains more reprehensible than the thought of increasing your carbon footprint a smidgen. Sometimes it does make sense to go for that bottle of water. We won’t tell. No need for massive guilt trips. Just keep in mind that you’re only paying for convenience, not for exceptional purity of the water.”

[via MNN]