BMUN Sustainability Blog

As part of our effort to make BMUN as sustainable as possible, one of our big goals for this year was to educate the club’s members and participants of the conference on the fallacy of bottled water.  So, we placed a big order for re-usable stainless steel canteens, and they just arrived a few days ago!  All of our secretariat will be carrying the bottles, and they will be available for purchase at the upcoming Delegate Workshop as well as the Conference next year.

We placed our order with Tuxedo Ranch, a supplier of many environmentally friendly products ranging from canteen water bottles to sustainable apparel, and the order came out beautifully.  The canteens are a deep sapphire blue, with the BMUN logo displayed brilliantly on one side in a crisp white.  The top of the bottle has a small lip for convenience of use, and features a looped lid that can easily be hooked on to just about anything.  So far we love them!

There are several reasons we decided that this would make a good purchase for the club.  First, because we want to encourage everyone to consider replacing their bottled water with tap water. Bottled water has immense externalized costs, ranging from transnational shipping (from places as remote as Fiji) and the petroleum-based production of plastic, to the social costs of extracting water from communities for the purposes of commodification.  Secondly, because eliminating bottled water means that fewer plastic bottles end up in the trash can or recycling bin, which builds on one of our primary goals of waste diversion in BMUN.  And finally, because tap water is delicious – and just as safe as bottled water.  To learn more about why you should try the tap, check out Food and Water Watch’s informative site here. (I’m going to write a separate blog just on bottled water sometime in the future. Check back soon!)

That’s all from me for now.  Check for an update from me soon about our plans for the upcoming Delegate Workshop!