WINNIPEG (CUP) — As many as 62 Canadian campuses will be uniting this week for the first-annual Bottled Water Free Day.

The day will be held March 11 to bring awareness to the negative impacts of bottled water.

“Bottled water is a major issue on campuses as it has pretty serious health repercussions, certainly major concerns about the environmental impact it has, and it addition, some students (are) charged thousands of dollars to pay for something they can get out of a tap for free,” said Noah Stewart, national deputy chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, who provided the estimate of the number of participating campuses.

Bottled Water Free Day is a joint project between CFS, the Sierra Youth Coalition and the Polaris Institute.

Elly Adeland, water and energy campaigner at Polaris Institute — a strategic-planning organization for citizen movements — said the campaign against bottled water has been growing over the past number of years, with bottle bans having succeeded in 76 municipalities, four municipal associations, eight school boards, many businesses, and, soon, as many as six university campuses.

“In the past year we’ve heard from a lot of students, specifically, that they were interested in taking action on a specific day, and so we formed Bottled Water Free Day this year,” said Adeland.

“It’s quite the movement that’s come a long way.”

Stephen Montague, president of the Brandon University Students’ Union in Brandon, Man., said his school will use the day to raise awareness of their successful campaign to ban the sale and distribution of bottled water on campus. Brandon University signed a pledge to become bottled water free in December 2009.

“It’s an important day for us. It’s the first big day since we became the third campus in Canada to go bottled water free,” said Montague.

He hopes to the campaign will encourage other campuses across Canada to “come on board and get rid of the bottle.” At Brandon, the day will include distribution of information as well as a pledge students can sign to go bottled-water free.

He said virtually all bottled water has been removed from campus and that drinking-fountain upgrades have begun to ensure clean, safe infrastructure.

“The response that we’ve heard around campus is still extremely positive and students are still quite excited about it.”

In Fredericton, N.B., the St. Thomas University Students’ Union recently put a referendum question to its student body asking whether or not they would support the union in advocating the university to phase out the sale of bottled water on campus.

Ella Henry, vice-president education of the STUSU, said the referendum passed with 65 per cent of the students voting in favour of pushing for the ban.

“We’re happy with that and are going to move forward from that to work with the university to develop a plan to phase out the sale of bottled water on campus, which obviously includes improving the water infrastructure on campus,” she said.

STU will be participating in Bottled Water Free Day, and will have an information booth where students will have the opportunity to sign a pledge to not drink bottled water as well as a taste test of bottled water and tap water.

She said the movement against bottled water has expanded very quickly into a coalition of groups from across Fredericton, including student groups at both St. Thomas University and its neighbour the University of New Brunswick, labour organizations and environmental organizations.

“We didn’t want to go forward on this without a mandate from students. . . . We thought that . . . would both be the democratic way to go about it and put some pressure on the university to do things like show us the (existing beverage exclusivity) contract so that we could work towards an agreement.”

Even with the successful referendum, Henry said banning bottled water on campus depends on a number of things — including the co-operation of university administration as well as the contents of the university’s beverage exclusivity contract with Pepsi.

“I’m fairly confident that we’ll be able to start soon, at least improving the (water fountain) infrastructure on campus.”

According to Adeland, Ryerson University and Collège universitaire de Saint Boniface will announce on March 11 that they, too, will be going bottled water free, joining the University of Winnipeg, Memorial University and Brandon University.

“While it has been very student-organized, it’s actually (up) to every citizen in Canada to start mobilizing around pledging to start today or any day and to drink public water in place of bottled water where ever possible.”

She said the movement against bottled water needs to continue beyond Bottled Water Free Day.

“It’s not just a day. It goes on. This is one day of mobilization but everyday is bottled water free day for a lot of these folks so it is a really inspirational movement that we’re seeing happening.”