Tufts students joined with city officials, community members and leaders of lobbying organizations to protest outside Boston's City Hall yesterday. But instead of holding "End the War" signs, these protestors opted to carry ones that read "Don't toss it, use a faucet."
The aim of yesterday's "Boston Tap Party" was to launch the Think Outside the Bottle (TOTB) pledge, which calls upon the people, businesses and government of Boston to turn on the tap instead of buying a brand of bottled water.
Corporate Accountability International, a group dedicated to ending corporate abuse of resources and power, and Green Corps, an organization aiming to teach future environmental leaders, worked together to organize the rally.
The event yesterday coincided with several others across the nation. Boston was chosen as one of the cities for the launch because it has a robust public water system and relies only minimally on government contracts with bottled water corporations, according to Green Corps Assistant Organizing Director Sam Landenwitsch.
"We would point to Boston as a city that obviously has great water and a strong commitment to the public water system," he said. "If we could hold that up as an example of what's good, we think we can get other cities to follow the lead."
But the frontrunner has been San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom agreed in June to cut contracts with bottled water companies for city buildings.
In anticipation of yesterday's launch, though, some cities - including Salt Lake City, Utah and San Leandro, Calif. - also expressed interest in reducing their local government's dependence on bottled water.
Tufts students' involvement in the campaign stems from an already two-year-old effort to encourage the use of tap water.
The Tufts group centered around this cause is now 100 participants strong, making it the most active undergraduate campus in the TOTB campaign. Twenty of the 100 participants are TOTB interns who donate at least 10 hours each week to the campaign.
Seniors Ben Gabin and Kate Daniel and junior Elizabeth DeWan are three of these interns who have taken the lead in the on-campus movement.
They hope to lobby students to stop using bottled water and the administration to stop providing it to faculty members.
To that end, they held a "World Water Challenge" last year and this year they decorated the cannon with water bottles as a sign of protest.
Landenwitsch said that Tufts students have been pivotal participants in the larger effort.
"Tufts has actually been a centerpiece of our campaign so far in Boston," he said.
While many think bottled water is always purer than tap water, the TOTB campaign asserts that this is a myth. According to the Boston Globe, for example, one source for Aquafina water is the public water system of Ayer, Massachusetts.
Officials at water bottling companies said yesterday that they don't discourage the use of tap water, but maintained that bottled water fills its own niche for consumers.
"It fulfills people's need for a portable, easily accessible, healthful beverage when they're on the go," said Jane Lazgin, a spokesperson for Nestle Waters North America. "If people were not drinking bottled water we've done studies about 52 percent would be drinking soda."
Many tap waters are also treated with chlorine or fluoride, which not all consumers may want, said Tony Varni, the vice president of the 7-Up Bottling Company, which also produces NOAH'S California Spring Water.
Still, Boston's public water system, one utilized by many regional towns including Medford and Somerville, is so pure that the Environmental Protection Agency does not require it to be treated.
At yesterday's event, organizers got an enthusiastic response from Mayor Thomas Menino's administration. James Hunt, a member of Menino's cabinet and an advisor to the mayor on the environment and energy, expressed his boss' support for the project.
"We ask [that] the general public not only think outside the bottle, but also ... think inside the tap," he said.
Hunt pointed out that a large amount of oil is used to transport the water and to create the plastic used in the bottles, and also mentioned the price inflation between tap water and bottled water.
Still, bottled water companies believe that their products are worth the price. Noah's California Spring Water, for example, contains extra magnesium, which Varni said that many people need more of.
Even though Menino did not promise to cut contracts with bottled water companies, Gabin and DeWan two of the Tufts' TOTB interns were enthusiastic about his position.
"I think it's really important for us to know that the city government is on our side," DeWan said.
"That was a very good sign for the campaign," Gabin agreed.
Giovanni Russonello, Marc Raifman and Rob Silverblatt contributed reporting to this article.
