Four thousand lucky incoming students will receive free water bottles this September, with an aim to increase awareness around sustainable water use.

Both Student Affairs and Services and the Memorial University of Newfoundland Students’ Union will provide the water bottles at orientation for first-year students and at registration locations for people attending university for the first time.

The idea came from witnessing the environmental impact of orientations past," says Student Life Program Liaison Officer Meghan Mitchell.

“After orientation was over, there were piles of bottles around, overflowing the recycling bins,” she says. “Many of them would only have a few sips taken out of them and then be put down and forgotten.”

To really drive the sustainability quotient home this year, students’ orientation information will be stored on a USB key instead of on sheets of paper. The keys will then be distributed by placing them inside the water bottles. Students will be encouraged to fill their bottles from the new chilled and filtered water fountains on campus.

In an effort to encourage people to go “Bottled Water Free,” 13 of the new fountains will accommodate all refillable water bottles. In recent years, there has been a trend toward the commodification of water instead of free access to public water, something Memorial’s Students for Sustainability has been demanding of the university’s administration.

“Students are really catching that bug,” says Adam Daniels, Resource Co-ordinator at MUNSU. “We also know students are looking to attend universities that are integrating more sustainable practices.”

This year’s cache of freebie water bottles will also come with the added bonus of being bisphenol-A free – a controversial chemical found in some plastics.