McGill says it currently sells about 85,000 plastic water bottles every year and thousands more are distributed at special events.
(Navneet Pall/CBC) Plastic water bottles will soon be a thing of the past at McGill, as the university plans to phase out the sale of bottled water on its campuses over the next 14 months.
Non-carbonated bottled water will no longer be sold in vending machines and anywhere food is sold on McGill’s downtown and Macdonald campuses by May 2019, the university said on Friday.
François Miller, director of the McGill Office of Sustainability, told CBC News he was "convinced" the move has popular support at the school.
He said McGill currently sells around 85,000 single-use, plastic water bottles every year and thousands more are distributed during special events.
(Navneet Pall/CBC) "We think that by phasing out those bottles over the course of the next 14 months, it will have a large impact on McGill’s sustainability in general," Miller said.
McGill says it will improve existing water fountains and build 25 new ones as part of the $150,000 project.
She said it will be great to have more water fountains on campus.
Sayeef Mohammed, a mechanical engineering student at McGill, said getting rid of plastic water bottles campus-wide is "a great initiative in trying to make [it] more sustainable."
Bottled water is "a luxury that is completely unnecessary," Mohammed told CBC News.