http://www.flickr.com/photos/beyondthebottle/

Pretty awesome.

http://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/house-representatives-call-cuts-bottled-water-spending

After seeing the documentary Garbarge! The Revolution Starts at Home, the two activists/entrepreneurs used their marketing know-how to start the company and launch the “drinking problem” ad campaign during the presidential elections of 2008.

The campaign proved successful. Obama signed Tappening’s tap water pledge and the company was able to follow up with this ad:

Their most recent ad campaign, Start a Lie, continues Tappening’s provocative trend. The new campaign is garnering attention by purposefully starting a lie, the same tactic they say bottled water companies use to turn us away from the tap.

According to DiMassimo, “puffery is one thing, but some advertising is simply lies. I’ve observed that there are two types who perpetrate this: Those who admit it and those who don’t.”

“We’re not just admitting it up front, we’re bragging about it,” adds Yaverbaum. “We want people to know we’re blatantly lying in our new campaign…and, most importantly, that everyone should pay close attention to what’s factual in marketing and what’s – not so much.”

The website that accompanies the ads, www.startalie.com, urges people to add their own opinions.

“If they can lie, so can you.”

Map of the value stream of water at Commencement, and problems/obstacles in the value stream.

On Thursday, Nov. 4, Armide, Jason, and Ari from BtB’s Steering Committee participated in a 4.5 hour (!) “kaizen” session with representatives from Dining Services and Facilities and an outside consultant to identify obstacles and brainstorm solutions for water at Commencement. We’re just in the beginning stages of tackling this big bottle-consuming beast, but stay tuned for more!

After brainstorming solutions to our problems/obstacles, we plotted them on a graph of potential impact vs. potential difficulty.

Water Week Flier

Our goal is to remove any inconveniences associated with tap water – as we can’t all have a faucet in our room – and demonstrate to the community that there is no advantage to plastic bottles.  We already know that tap water is more efficient and equitable than bottled.  We will fix up the fountains that need fixing, put them in where there is a lack, and then toting a reusable bottle will be just as easy as snagging a plastic one from the carton when you leave the room.

Artist Jesse Cohn says:

I like reusing materials – making something valuable about something discarded. I also like making things out of familiar items. It’s important to me that the art is accessible to the viewer. I like that someone who doesn’t know anything about art can look at what I’ve made and understand how I’ve made it and, for the mos

t part, what I’ve tried to accomplish through the piece.

About 400 bottles came from the Beyond the Bottle tower. The others were primarily collected from recycling bins on campus and around College Hill. I would literally wake up at 7am on trash day and walk around the east side with a garbage bag taking bottles from the curb. The rest I got over winter break at home from my family and friends’ recycling. I have kept about 300 of the bottles, but I emptied the rest of them and recycled them.

Olympic athletes tearing it up on the slopes or landing multiple triple axels clearly need to stay hydrated.

So do the millions of tourists visiting Vancouver this February. As part of its Tap Water Campaign, the city is encouraging these tourists to choose tap over bottled during their Olympic visit.

The city has set up a “water wagon” downtown, where visitors can rehydrate with tap water from the region’s reservoirs, according to the Metro Vancouver website. Pedestrians are also asked to sign a pledge to support tap water over bottled. Sound familiar? (Take our online pledge if you haven’t already!)

Some hotels are on board with the initiative, too. At the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, for example, guests are given the choice to buy a reusable water bottle instead of single-use bottles, according to the Metro Vancouver website.

As a CBC news article points out, this push for tap over bottled water could lead to conflict with Coca-Cola, the parent company of Dasani and a major sponsor of the Olympics. But Coke doesn’t seem to be too worried. According to the article, the company says it still expects to sell over a million bottles of water during the games.

The campaign has already gained exposure thanks to all the national and international attention focused on Vancouver. So maybe it’s time to push our fair city into the spotlight. Providence Winter Olympics 2018? We know it certainly gets cold enough.