Literature Review

To college students, drinking water from a tap can be disconcerting, especially if the tap is from the sink
in the community bathroom. Though the quality of the water may be no different than bottled water for
instance, students are deterred from filling up bottles due to the fact that most taps in dorms are located in
the bathrooms. At the University of Rhode Island, filtered water fountains are scarce in older buildings
and students often depend on using tap water from sinks located in bathrooms.
Many of the older buildings at the University of Rhode Island (URI) do not have drinking water access
points or filtered water stations for students to drink. The lack of drinking water access points has caused
students to buy bottled water instead of filling up their own bottle. With increased bottled water
purchases, the impact on the URI environment will be significant. For example, at Cornell University the
annual estimated emissions is 115,000 kg of CO2 (2015, sustainablecampus.cornell.edu). At Cornell
University it is estimated that 640,000 dollars are spent yearly on bottled water while the same volume of
tap or filtered water would cost approximately 1000 dollars (2015, sustainablecampus.cornell.edu).
Using numbers from Cornell, finding ways to decrease the number of students buying bottled water
could create significant savings while preserving the environment. Also, reducing bottled water
purchases can have long term health benefits. Chemicals, specifically bisphenol A, has been proven to
migrate from polycarbonate bottles and plastics into water. The warmer and longer the water is in contact
with the plastics the higher the levels of bisphenol A (Gena L. Napier, Charles M. Kodner, 2008,
sciencedirect.com).
The average usage of bottled water per person has dropped approximately 3.5% over the past three years
(Wendy Koch and Kirsti Marohn, 2015, USA Today). This decrease shows that the general population is
not buying bottled water at the same rate as the past. Over 150 universities have added filtered water
refilling stations (Wendy Koch and Kirsti Marohn, 2015, USA Today) URI being has added these stations
in almost all of the new building around its campus. The suggestion to add filtered water fountains to all
of the older buildings has been made. Adding these systems will be ecologically friendly and in the long
term economically friendly.
Studies at Vassar College have been conducted on several college campuses across the nation and polls
were taken to determine where students obtain drinking water from. Approximately 69% of students
surveyed prefer to get their water from a drinking water access points. The same survey allowed students
to choose multiple sources of water. In this case, the numbers showed that 74.8% of students surveyed
filled up using bathroom sinks, whether filtered or not, but students typically commented that this was
done out of necessity due to the lack of a fountain in the dorms. Only 27.3% of students reported
purchasing bottled water in place of drinking from the tap (Souto, 2014). This study is a specialized case
that does not apply to every university. However, the values recorded can be useful benchmarks when
performing research at URI to help solve the problem of getting filtered water fountains on campus.
Princeton University conducted a similar study on their students. In this case however, the university had
installed approximately 200 filtered water stations around campus and analyzed the environmental and
social impacts the drinking water access points had. Concerning the environment, producing bottled
water takes approximately 2000 times more energy than tap water (Gleick, 2009). The cost of producing
bottled water ranges from $1.22 - $7.50 per gallon in comparison to a mere $0.0004 per gallon for tap
water (Demszky, 2014). Bottled water regulations fall under the jurisdiction of the FDA, which only
undergoes one quality control check and does not require lab testing. However, tap water is regulated by
the EPA which has more stringent rules including constant lab testing and public feedback about any
contaminants to ensure that the water is safe to drink (Goodman, 2009).

An annual report concerning URIs water quality is released to the public. The document provides a large
amount of data on different contaminants and demonstrates that the waters quality is sufficient enough to
leave no adverse health effects. According to the document, the Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL)
are set to be low enough that no health effects will be induced by contaminants. A person would have to
drink 2 liters of water every day, as recommended by health professionals, at the MCL level for a lifetime
to have a one in a million chance of having the described health effect (URI 2014). URI draws its water
from the Chippuxet groundwater aquifer through three separate wells. Once the water is drawn, it is
treated with chlorination and its pH value is adjusted and is stored in the one million gallon storage tank
at the top of the Kingston campus. The document also recommends that the tap is allowed to run for 30
seconds to 2 minutes in order to remove any lead from local piping.
Despite the clean tap water at URI, the stigma still exists and water consumption is not as cost efficient
When water access is either bad, or non-existent; consumers tend to not buy water bottles (Patel &
Hampton, 2011), which is likely due to the fact that they can just get free water at home. The question of
what makes water access bad? is also relevant in this issue. What has been found is that there is a bad
stigma that is related to public drinking fountains. People question whether the tap water is clean, cold,
and tasteful (Centers for Disease Control, 2014). All of these questions result in public water fountains
generally being perceived as warm and dirty. A study in ten northern California schools found that 70% of
students reported that they would not drink out of the public drinking water access points (Patel &
Hampton, 2011). This statistic has to do with the fact that 73% of schools in the US were built before
1969 (Patel & Hampton, 2011) meaning that the lead leaching is high, and the taste/ quality of the water is
down.
There is work being done by organizations such as the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), along with many others all trying to increase the drinking of
water (Centers for Disease Control, 2014). To achieve this, water access will need to improve, and the
stigma behind public drinking water will need to be diminished. Our team will be researching what can be
done to improve water access, specifically free filtered water at the University of Rhode Island.

Research Questions
1. On the Kingston campus how many drinking water access points on campus are not functioning
and why are they not functioning?
2. What are the state of Rhode Islands regulations in regards to Universities or school systems
having a required amount of water fountain accessibility and does URI meet them?
3. Would there be environmental and economic savings if most of the water on campus came from
water fountains instead of being purchased as water bottles?
4. Who on campus would be interested in getting professionals on campus who have knowledge of
the problem in order to find funding for new fountains?
5. How does the general student population at URI feel about drinking water access points and
would the drinking water access points be used? If students would not want to drink from
drinking water access points why would they not?
6. Is this problem being addressed in anyway already if it is how can the process be accelerated?
7. Would students be more likely to drink from a refillable water container than pre-bottled water or
other products?

User Analysis

Based upon our research we have found that the most common user of tap water we encounter on campus
is the student and. The idea is that these users need to drink more water as well as use more reusable
sources of water. We found that many people prefer to not drink from water fountains or from the tap
because of certain stigmas they have about tap water. Some of the users feel that the water is not clean
enough to drink. This encourages users to purchase things such as Poland Spring water bottles instead of
using reusable sources of water. It has been found that the use of reusable tap water is 300 times less
expensive than using the same amount of bottled water (Boesler, 2003). In the Water Quality report
produced by URI in 2014 the Universitys tap water was tested for all contaminants and was found to
meet all and exceed some of the Maximum Contaminant Levels (URI, 2014). The Maximum
Contaminant Levels or MCLs are designed so that the consumer would experience no health effects after
drinking the recommended amount of the sample water every day (URI, 2014). The campus also tests for
the amount of lead present in the drinking water and found it to be below the allowed level (URI, 2014).
With this being said the report does say that the tap should be run from thirty seconds to two minutes if
the water has not been used for several hours. This is recommended to minimize the potential for lead
exposure due to the materials used in the campuses water piping (URI, 2014).
We wanted to see if easy access to functioning water fountains and tap water was a problem. To do so we
polled and interviewed students at the University and found that around 60% of the polled students were
not satisfied with access to water fountains on the campus. Of the students polled exactly half of them
were residents and half were commuters. When asked the question Is there anything you would like to
see the university do about increasing the availability of water fountains on campus? about 78% of the
polled students said that yes they would want fountains in all of the dorms and for the fountains to be
similar to the ones that are newly installed in the fitness center and in the Memorial Union. Despite the
desire shown by the students respondance for more water fountains on campus a surprising number of
them already regularly used some of the water fountains on campus. Just about 70% of the polled
students said that they do carry a reusable water bottle an of that 70% around 90.4% of them only refilled
them on campus. Half of the people that only refilled on campus refilled at Mackal while the rest said
they either filled up at the library or any available fountain. Of the 30% of students that said they did not
use reusable water bottles 27% said they trusted the tap but just happened to buy cases of water bottles.
While 55% of the students that had non-reusable water bottles said they did not trust the Universitys tap
water. In the end, of the students polled only a few wanted to use water bottles despite trusting the tap
water while the rest did not trust the tap. There is a student that fears tap water for false reasons and could
potentially be convinced to start using more sources of reusable water and to drink from the tap. The idea
is to increase water consumption of students on campus but to also decrease usage of non-reusable
sources of water such as the using of a Nalgene bottle instead of entire cases of bottled water.

References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014). Increasing Access to Drinking Water in Schools.
Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services.
Cornell University (2016). Take Back the Tap. Retrieved February 26, 2016, from
http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/initiatives/take-back-the-tap
Demszky, D., Zempleni, R., Conlan, L., & Hiltner, S. (2014). Bottle vs. Tap Water: Impact Assessment.
Retrieved February 23, 2016, from sustain.princeton.edu
Goodman, S. (2009, July 9). Fewer Regulations for Bottled Water than Tap, GAO Says. Retrieved
February 23, 2016, from www.nytimes.com
Gleick, P. H. and H. S. Cooley (2009). Energy implications of bottled water. Environmental Research
Letters 4. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
Napier, G. L., & Kodner, C. M. (2008). Health Risks and Benefits of Bottled Water. Primary Care:
Clinics in Office Practice, 35(4), 789-802.
Patel, A. I., Hampton, K. E. (2011). Encouraging Consumption of Water in School and Child Care
Settings: Access, Challenges, and Strategies for Improvement. American Public Health
Association, 101(8), 1370-1379.
Souto, N. (2010). Drinking Water Survey Report. Retrieved February 23, 2016, from
http://pages.vassar.edu.
University of Rhode Island. (2014). Water Quality Report 2014. Retrieved February 26, 2016, from
http://web.uri.edu/facilities/files/2014-Drinking-Water-Quality-Report.pdf