Bottled water sales banned at Southbank campus from today

6 Oct 2011
The University of Melbourne’s Southbank campus will stop selling bottled water from today making it the first Victorian university campus to reduce its environmental footprint in this way.

The University of Melbourne’s Southbank campus will stop selling bottled water from today making it the first Victorian university campus to reduce its environmental footprint in this way.

Sustainability Manager Harry Troedel said the water bottle-free initiative would be implemented at Southbank, with the aim of rolling it out across the entire university. "Students and staff have been incredibly supportive so we think it will be a very successful program," he said.

Sharyn Lowe from Do Something! (a not-for-profit organisation that promotes environmental change) has provided support and expertise to the university throughout the development of the water bottle-free program and said it provided huge environmental benefits.

"Moving away from bottled water and back to tap water makes strong environmental sense," she said. "The national recycling rate for PET plastic soft drink containers is only 36% - the rest ends up as litter or landfill. In addition to that, it can also take up to 250ml of oil and 1.3 to 3 litres of water to produce just one litre of bottled water," Ms Lowe said.

"Our research shows that more than 78% of people believe there aren’t enough public water bubblers with 66% saying they would buy less bottled water if more bubblers were available.

"This move will save the students money and help the environment at the same time."

As part of today’s launch, local supplier Vestal will give away free water bottles for students and staff on the Southbank campus, home to the Victorian College of the Arts.

Café tenant ReSauce has installed a water vending machine that serves low-cost chilled, filtered, sparkling and flavoured water and the university has installed 10 Aqua Bubblers where bottles can be refilled free of charge. The café has taken all bottled water off its shelves and all vending machines have had bottled water removed.

Director of the Victorian College of the Arts Su Baker said she was a strong supporter of the campaign. "We all need to play our part in reducing our environmental impact - this is just one way we can all make a difference by doing something as simple as refilling our water bottles," she said.

"Students and staff will still have access to a variety of water - we are still servicing their needs but just doing it in a different way."

The water bottle free campaign is just one of the ways the VCA has helped to reduce its impact through reduction in waste, transport, water and energy consumption.

Recently it installed a $2 million absorption chiller to replace ageing air conditioning units and invested more than $200,000 upgrading lights in five of its buildings. These changes are saving Southbank campus $75,000 per year and have reduced carbon emissions by almost 1000 tonnes annually.