Ban The Sale Of Plastic Water Bottles & Replace With Water Filling Stations
Single-use plastic water bottles are clogging our oceans, rivers, streets, landfills and poisoning our air when they're burned in incinerators. And they're almost always unnecessary except in emergency situations.The tap water in most U.S. communities is high-quality and offers an affordable, safe and good-tasting way to stay hydrated without generating huge amounts of unnecessary single-use plastic pollution.
Urge your local airport, government, school, or business to follow San Francisco International Airport's lead (more on that here) and ban the sale of single-use plastic water bottles on their premises and ensure that there are enough water filling stations to keep everyone’s thirst quenched.
Check out the organizing resources below to get started.
SAMPLE PETITION
Gathering petition signatures is an excellent way to recruit supporters and demonstrate broad public support for banning the sale of single-use plastic water bottles at your local airport or government.
Click here to view our sample petition language that you can use as a starting point for your own version of the petition.
Although you can certainly circulate a paper petition (click here for a sample version in Microsoft Word that you can adapt as you see fit), an online petition may prove more powerful as it is far easier to share and does not require anyone to do canvassing. Contact Alexis Goldsmith if you would like to set up your own instance of Beyond plastics’ Action Network toolset to centralize your signature collection and email tools.
SAMPLE LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The opinions page is one of the most-read pages of any paper making letters to the editor an effective way to reach a large audience including your local and state elected officials who tend to the editorials pages religiously.
And even if your letter does not get published, you are still helping to educate the editors on these issues and increasing the chances that they will publish letters on this topic in the future.
We’ve drafted a sample letter you can use as a starting point for creating your own letter about banning the sale of single-use water bottles. P.S. Don’t forget to read through our tips on how to write an effective letter to the editor here before you get started.
GET THE FACTS
Knowledge is power! Having facts at your fingertips will help you make the case for the necessity of banning the sale of single-use plastic water bottles in your local airport or government offices.
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLKIT
Social media can be a powerful took to help gather supporters and also to let elected officials know this is an important issue that they should prioritize.
We’ve put together sample content you can share on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well as some ready-to-use graphics to help illustrate this campaign.
Browse the toolkit to get started now but please don’t be afraid to make your own materials as your work advances.