Recommendation: An effective strategy to encourage students to use Planet Blue water bottles is to add a tax on plastic water bottles throughout campus. By increasing the cost of non-renewable water bottles, regular consumers would purchase less of them. In order to address non-University plastic bottle sales, the University should also form private-social partnerships with local businesses to offer incentives to students who bring their reusable water bottles to the stores including, but not limited to, reduced soda prices and free water refills. In addition, the University could also encourage nearby businesses to raise their prices on plastic water bottles by creating a private-social partnership with the local stores to create incentives for students to use their reusable water bottles. Such incentives can include decreasing price for soda machines or having free water refill stations available for students to use with their water bottles. The University could solidify this deal by selling extra water bottles from the Free Water Bottle Initiative at a reduced price to these companies in bulk so the stores can sell them at competitive prices compared to plastic water bottles.
Research: McCabe and Block (2014) argued that paying an extra fee for plastic water bottles would be an effective strategy to address the environmental harm caused by plastic water bottle waste. They found that, by analyzing consumer interest in using plastic water bottles versus the cost of maintaining and purchasing a reusable water bottle, some occasional plastic water bottle users at Loyola University New Orleans choose bottled water because it is a cheaper option in the short run. For example, the authors stated that the short term cost of $9.95 of a reusable bottle at a campus bookstore exceeds the $1.59 cost of a plastic water bottle. Therefore, buying more than 6 plastic bottles is not wise when that money can be spent on a reusable bottle. If the short term price of a plastic bottle was increased by a tax, the short term costs would increase and encourage students to seek an alternative and buy a reusable water bottle. This would be especially important for non-first year students who do not receive a free water bottle from the University. Since more people in general would be using reusable bottles, they would model sustainable behavior and encourage others to use Planet Blue water bottles.
Taxed Water Bottle. Source: Barwhiz Blog
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