The days of bottled water in Burnaby schools may be numbered. Students from environmental clubs in local high schools are campaigning for people to choose tap water over bottled water to help protect the environment and reduce waste.

"This is the only planet we have. We have to try and take care of it to make sure future generations have the same things we have today," said Kevin Hua, spokesperson for Alpha Secondary's environmental club.

The group of about 20 students brought in local resident Peter Cech from Metro Vancouver to talk about the regional government's tap water campaign.

Metro Vancouver, which supplies Burnaby's tap water, is also pushing for people to switch to tap water instead of single-use plastic bottles.

Since Cech's presentation, the students have signed up others in their school to take a pledge to drink tap water, and they've had some water fountains fixed, they've ordered some stainless steel water bottles to sell. They also collected petition signatures, asking the school district to renegotiate contracts with the vending machine companies to sell less bottled water in schools.

Reno Ciolfi is the district's director of instruction. He's also the staff member designated to handle environmental initiatives, so he's been working with the students on the bottled water issue and is on side.

"We feel it's the right thing to do," Ciolfi said, adding that the district strongly supports students' environmental sustainability initiatives in general.

The district's vending machine contracts, which cover bottled water sales, don't expire until 2015.

"Environmental sustainability doesn't give you a licence to disregard contracts," Ciolfi said.

However, Ciolfi said he was confident that they can work with the companies "to do the right thing." The vending contracts were signed a couple of years ago, when bottled water wasn't the issue it is today, Ciolfi said, adding the district wouldn't necessarily ban bottled water anyway.

"Right now, our option is to reduce demand," he said. "The fact of the matter is bottled water sales are down."

And besides, that's not how you create change, he added.

"If you want deep and long-lasting attitudinal change, the way you do that is engage in conversations with people," he said. "Banning something is not a way to make attitudinal change."

Alpha students aren't the only ones broaching the issue either. Ciolfi said just about all secondary schools in the district have students raising awareness around reducing bottled water use. To help the cause, the district has installed water stations in four schools, Alpha included, where kids can fill their reusable bottles with cold, filtered water. For the next vending machine contract negotiations, Ciolfi said the district will gather ideas from the students on what they want to see in their schools.

In the meantime, the Alpha students will continue campaigning.

"(We want) to show the community we're actually trying to do something, that students are willing to actually care about the environment," Hua said.

WHY TAKE THE PLUNGE?:

- About 70 per cent of single-use beverage bottles (less than one litre) are recaptured because B.C. has a deposit system, but millions of these bottles still end up in Metro Vancouver's environment every year.

- Water bottles (like any food packaging) cannot be recycled into more food packaging - those bottles all gets downcycled into other products like fleece vests. About 20 per cent of each of those downcycled bottles ending up as residual garbage that Metro Vancouver gets to either bury or burn.

- We have protected mountain watersheds capturing rain water and melted snow in pristine stone bowls, and we have a state-of-the-art water treatment plant up and running at Seymour (where Burnaby gets almost all of its tap water) that allows Metro Vancouver to add even less chlorine.

- Metro Vancouver's Tap Water Campaign has collected over 10,000 pledges from the region's residents, Metro Vancouver will be acquiring a "Water Wagon" later this year to make tap water available at major public events, and Metro Vancouver developed a free IPhone app, called Tap Map: http://bit.ly/g3nDaH. That database contains the locations of more than 550 public drinking fountains.

- Plastic has only been around for 50 to 60 years, and I'm not sure anyone knows how long it takes for all that plastic to break down - if it ever does. Ergo, every piece of plastic ever made is still out there somewhere unless someone has burned it.

Source: Peter Cech, Metro Vancouver