Bottled water to dry up in schools
[attach]5782[/attach]Former Toronto Catholic District School Board student trustee Natalie Rizzo says she felt she was stabbed in the back when she was told the board was reconsidering a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles at board facilities.
Last April the board voted unanimously on a student-driven initiative to ban the sale of bottled water, but following a report on the progress of the ban, some board members questioned their previous decision.
“It just blew my mind to be perfectly honest. I couldn’t believe that some of them were bucking,” says trustee Maria Rizzo, who is of no relation to Natalie. “What kind of message is that sending to students? If they come to us we do it, then we take it all back?”
Natalie agrees.
“It just says something about the value of the student voice in the Toronto Catholic (District) School Board,” she says.
“Students initiated and spearheaded the campaign, and brought it to us,” the trustee adds. “That is why I sponsored the motion.”
During the debate, trustees were presented with a variety of reasons to ban bottled water, including concerns over the environmental and economic impacts and belief that clean and safe water should be available for everyone.
“A lot of students in this school board have the opportunity to travel to developing countries or countries in the global south,” says Natalie who has seen the importance of clean water through her travels in Kenya and India. “I think it really speaks to them when they see people who don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water.”
Catholic development educator Luke Stocking of Development and Peace was pleased to see the number of students who turned out to protest the near reversal of the ban.
“I think too often in our society we are taught that social change is a mater of click ‘like’ on Facebook,” he says. “And through this movement, students are seeing that it takes firm, persevering commitment to a social cause to really bring about meaningful change.”
After nearly three hours of debate, and almost a year later, the board voted 9-2 to uphold their previous decision and start the ban on bottled water next fall, to cheers from supporters in the room.
Elated with the decision she and her colleagues came to, Rizzo called the upholding of the bottled water ban very significant.
“It’s been done before in the United States and different parts of Canada at a university level,” she says. “But nothing as big as this.”