At Tufts, both Hodgdon Good-to-Go and the Commons sell Poland Spring water, a Nestle brand that is not sourced from public reservoirs. Instead, it is shipped from specific locations that the company says have "notably clean water," according to a July 17 article on CNN.com.
Hodgdon Unit Manager Mike Falconer said the venue switched from Aquafina to Poland Spring water before the 2006-2007 year.
Jumbo Express also sells boxes of Polar water, a "locally owned business" according to its Web site, that gets its water from Fountain Spring in Alton, N.H. and Hillside Farms Spring in Somers, Conn.
In addition, some individual department offices have their own bottled water contracts to fill their kitchens' water coolers. This was the case for the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning until last year, when they decided to stop buying bottled water in favor of filtered tap water.
"We decided to eliminate the bottled water from Poland Spring," said Maria Nicolau, a staff assistant for the department. "First of all, we think that it's more environmentally sound to use tap water and to have that filtered."
"More importantly, tap water is safe," she added. "It's clean, it's safe, so it makes sense to utilize that water rather than to be purchasing bottled water."
Nicolau said that, so far, no one has complained about the quality of the water. The department is purchasing a test kit, however, to make sure there is no lead in the water from the building's old pipes.
"It's so far so good," she said. "[Tap water] saves money and it's quality - it's filtered as well. That's one of the biggest reasons why we've decided to switch."
Director of Tufts' Office of Sustainability Sarah Creighton said Tufts Institute for the Environment no longer uses bottled water either.
"Obviously, trucking water around is polluting in terms of use of fossil fuels, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions," she said. "To put resources into bottled water is not a good use of resources."
- Matt Skibinski
