I’m sure you’ve all seen them, Swell water bottles. If you haven’t, then you might have been walking around with your eyes closed. Swell is a brand that blew up in 2015. The company also donates to different organizations based on the type of bottle purchased and has given every student in New York City a free bottle. After they started partnering with Starbucks, swell jumped from $10 million to $50 million in sales. Swell is considered trendy, and it was named the bottle of fashion week, so it didn’t take long for people to jump on this trend.
These water bottles are a trendy solution to reducing plastic. Plastic has completely taken over our lives. So many items in our everyday lives are made from plastic. It’s easy and coinvent for others while its everywhere and it’s a common use for water. Plastic used for water bottles contain toxins and take at least 450 years to decompose. So, switching a re-usable water bottle isn’t a bad idea.
Across campus, students are using reusable water bottles. Is this because they are being trendy or because they are actually reducing on plastic? Chyanne Morrison is a student at WVU. She uses a life is good Tervis bottle. When purchasing her bottle, she says she specifically bought it to reduce on how much plastic she was using with traditional bottles of water. Water bottles like this can be a pretty penny for a college student. The ever so trendy Swell bottle runs between $12 to $40 and Chyanne paid $30 for her reusable bottle.
Although that can seem pricy at first, in the long run you’re saving nearly $300 a year. West Virginia University does a great job of providing students places to refill their water bottles. In 2011, the university installed water bottle refilling station across campus.
Within 2 months of instalment, the station had already saved more than 900 plastic bottles. Since then the university has installed several more stations. These stations can be found in the Mountainlair, Brooks hall, CPASS, The Evansdale Crossing, The Rec and many more. Chyanne says she
never has a problem finding a place to refill her bottle. The station shows in the right-hand corner how many bottles have been saved with that station alone. With the use of reusable water bottles, students are staying trendy and saving the planet.
Almost Heaven, Almost Green 