Each year the world drops $15 billion to pay for a brand name. And it isn’t spent on a clothing line or a car logo. It’s spent on plastic water bottles.

Bottled water is significantly more expensive than tap water. According to the Ban the Bottle campaign in the United States, the recommended eight glasses of water a day, at U.S. tap rates, equals about 50 cents per year. If we drank that entire amount in bottled water, it would cost about $1,400 per person.

So why are we paying multi-million dollar corporations for our water? Don’t we all have sinks with free water in our very own kitchens anyway?

“The college I plan to go to won’t allow me to use plastic water bottles on campus,” says Senior Olivia Pena who will be attending University of Vermont (UVM) this fall. They banned the selling of plasticwater bottles on the campus for ecological reasons. As a result, the school developed a system to provide the student body with canteens they can fill up for free in  easyily accesible water stations that are distributed throughout the campus.  UVM is the largest public institution to do this so far.

The ban is not only “green” but free of pay.

“Bottled water is a symbol of our culture’s obsession with modifying things that should be public trust resources,” Mikayla McDonald, a recent UVM graduate, who helped launch the campaign that led to its ban. McDonald hopes it will reduce waste but more importantly she wants to change the behavior on campus.

“Students are going green and care about a college’s commitment to sustainability,” a USA Today news article explains.  Even, The Princeton Review, a trusted college ranking site, has begun to sort schools based on their ability to be “environmentally friendly.”  Schools worldwide are experiencing this “race for sustainability.” From installing green roofs and solar panels to cultivating organic gardens, colleges have become one of the greener, more sustainable environments. And one of the ways to become more “sustainable” is to ban the water bottle.

“Plants cannot grow easily because of the plastic water bottles”, says ehow.com. Most plastic bottles end up in landfills, where they will end up buried, contaminating the soil with these toxic substances. Because of the dirty soil,  groundwater can become polluted when the toxic chemicals sink deeper into the ground.

“Companies claim their bottles are eco-friendly but it’s actually a way for them to make more bottles for cheaper. The same amount of pollutants are released in the process,” says Senior Amanda Langan, a non-water bottle user.  Companies have been using less plastic material, but this doubles its production of bottles, eroding the planet with even more plastic water bottles.

“The effort alone it takes to make water bottles is outrageous,” McDonald exclaims. The energy we waste producing bottled water would be enough to power 190,000 homes.

“You feel you are a good citizen for recycling, but actually you’re not,” Olivia Pena says. Some plastic bottles may be reused by recycling companies, but millions of these bottles are eventually thrown away. These multimillion dollar industries are not only robbing the world’s money, but they’re also trashing our planet.

And there is another problem: the bottles themselves are harmful to our health. According to ehow.com, BPA, a chemical in the bottles, can affect the natural communication system of the body’s hormones when ingested.

If these plastic bottles are killing us and our planet, why do we continue to use them?

The plastic water bottle itself became popular, in the late 1940’s, when it began to replace glass. Once high-density polyethylene was introduced, plastic became the dominant water holder.   But now the fad is reversing itself.

“I reuse my water bottles anyway, if they are plastic or not,” Senior health guru, Cat Aracil says. She suggests if you don’t like the taste of your tap water, try a filtered water pitcher. But she admits that she uses sink water and refrigerator water.  So if we refill our water bottles anyway, why don’t we all just refill a non-plastic container?

According to “The Water Project,” bottled water is a luxury that should be considered to be a “crime.”  They would like to see these bottles completely disappear.