By Drew Anderson
1. Introduction
Vending machines are ubiquitous, both generally and on Mason’s campus. So too, are bottled and canned beverages. Even more common is water—whether bottled, canned, or out of the tap. The actual human-environment interaction I am focusing on here is at first glance extremely simple: you swipe your card or put money in the vending machine, receive a bottle (or can) of water, and drink.
Though we hardly even notice them or give them much thought, vending machines are a significant point of intersection between humans, the environment, and human society generally. Though in the moment of purchasing a drink at a vending machine, we likely hardly think about the environment, this interaction raises a lot of interesting questions on environmental, consumer, individual, and governance levels. In what follows I will break down the different components of this experience, namely, buying, consuming, and disposing of a can of water on the Fairfax Campus.
The specific question I will be pursuing is whether Mason’s recent switch from bottled to canned water was a more sustainable choice.
Picture of canned water in an on-campus store.
I chose the Johnson Center as the site since the food court is where I’ve seen the most bottled water purchases.
2. Resource Characteristics
The first condition of this experience I want to focus on is that of resources. To buy a can of water, you need materials for a vending machine, materials for a can, and a source of water to fill that can. Environmentally, there’s quite a lot going on here.
A vending machine is basically a refrigerator with a glass or plastic front and with an onboard computer equipped to vend products and process money—that’s a lot of small and complex parts, which makes it very difficult for to perform a life cycle analysis on. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had a difficult time finding any good academic literature on vending machines specifically, but refrigerators aren’t great for the environment.[i] Refrigerants traditionally use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)—indeed, they constitute the largest present demand of HFCs[ii]—which tend to be very harmful to the environment since they are about 1,000 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. Many other countries are switching to better refrigeration options, but the U.S. has largely not quite done so yet.[iii] In any case, as of this year, refrigerants are now regulated by the EPA, and it’s hard to say whether vending machines use alternative refrigerants or not.
The water, once bottled in Coca-Cola’s Detroit plant (now closed as of late 2021) is now bottled in their Grand Rapids plant. Dasani is tap water (yes, really)[iv]—former sources from the Detroit tap which itself comes from the Detroit River, but now most likely comes from the Grand Rapids tap, which comes from Lake Michigan.
2.1 Aluminum: dislodging the “eco-friendly” myth
Aluminum is more interesting. Aluminum as we recognize it (i.e., in pure form) doesn’t really exist in nature. Rather, it exists in Bauxite, a rock with high aluminum content. The long and short of it is that Bauxite is strip mined out of the ground and transported to a refinery, where it is refined to obtain alumina using the Bayer process. Bauxite is heavy and can’t be transported very far in raw form until it’s been refined into lighter-weight alumina. After being refined, the alumina is probably to somewhere further away (most refineries use imported alumina) and smelted into aluminum using an electrolysis process called the Hall-Heroult process. Electrolysis I believe is the standard for smelting many ores, such as copper. This whole process is visualized below (see below).
Notice the waste lake in the Bayer process image? Processing bauxite this way creates industrial waste called “red mud.”
“In spite of over a century of effort looking for uses, over 1200 patents and hundreds of technically successful trials, less than 4 million tons of the 150 million tons of bauxite residue produced annually is used in a productive way.”[v] Proper storage is usually the solution, but this is not without risk. In 2010, there was an accident at an alumina plant in Ajka Turkey where the dam wall of the waste lake collapsed, releasing 35 million cubic feet of sludge across 15 square miles of land, killing 10 people along with whatever wildlife was in its way.[vi]
Oh, and strip mining—which is how Bauxite is mined since it’s generally found close to the surface—isn’t great for the environment and the people who live nearby either.[vii] Strip mining requires all native wildlife, vegetation, habitats, and soil be removed and overturned. Very little of this happens in the United States nowadays.
Setting aside local pollution, the main reason I highlight the actual production processes is to point out that they are very energy intensive. “Energy intensive” is a rather nebulous term, so we need something to compare it to; here, writing about beverages, we’re concerned with whether aluminum cans are more sustainable than plastic. Thus, compared with plastic, aluminum has a significantly higher carbon footprint: It has a significantly higher carbon footprint than plastic: 11.09 tons of CO2 is emitted per ton of cans produced, while plastic produces 2.2 tons of CO2.[viii] I believe this statistic is referring to mostly virgin aluminum produced with fossil fuels. The 2016 EPA report has a lot of information about this.[ix]
Despite the higher up-front cost however, aluminum theoretically makes up for this by its recyclability. Aluminum is easily recyclable, and this process does not use as nearly as much power as creating new aluminum. The vast majority of the emissions generated in the creation of an aluminum can come from the creation of new aluminum. This is to say that recycling drops emissions down to what is likely a negligible amount—or at least on par with plastic.
The Carbon Trust, in a 2021 report,[x] perform a carbon analysis of a variety of beverage containers. Note the significant variability of aluminum compared to most other materials. This is for two reasons. First, because (as I’ve said) most of the emissions generated from aluminum are in its initial production. Thus, the impact of a can on the environment from an emissions perspective depends largely on whether it was produced with renewable energy or not (most European aluminum plants do use renewable energy). Indeed, from an economic perspective, the siting of an aluminum smelting plant largely has to do with whether there is cheap electricity available in the area. China used to subsidize quite a bit of this, but as they crack down more and more on their carbon footprint and emissions, who knows what will happen with this. Second, as you probably have guessed, has to do with recycling rates. Some graphs follow below showing how big of a difference recycling makes in emissions and energy use.
Also consider this, from the 2016 EPA report
My point here is that the “greenness” of aluminum largely has to do with how it is initially produced (difficult to determine from a consumer perspective) and how it is disposed of. As far as I can tell, if a beverage container is going to go into the landfill, plastic is the way to go since it is lightweight and not as energy intensive to produce. It’s worth mentioning that this was the reason plastic came to prominence in the first place—in a way that seems strange to us now, plastic in its advent was considered more environmentally friendly because it was inexpensive to produce compared to other materials like glass and paper. I’ll return to this idea later.
3. Governance/user characteristics
Aspects of governance here mostly involve regulation (state and federal) and internal GMU decisions.
George Mason has a very large contract with Coca-Cola which generates (according to GMU) over $800,000 in commissions and revenue.[xi] This profit (for those who don’t know) does not go to GMU, but rather towards student scholarships for athletes and those in the Honors program.
In regard to the water cans specifically, Mason’s sustainability office made the decision (sometime in late 2021—all I could find online was a Facebook post[xii] advertising the switch) to switch to cans. The Sustainability Office advertised this in terms of its aims for a “plastic free GMU,” and also in light of Governor Northam’s executive order 77, which bans single use and polystyrene from all state-related agencies.[xiii]
These cans were available in the first place because Coca-Cola—who, according to some, is perhaps the biggest polluter in the world on the consumer end of things—is probably trying to improve its optics as far as sustainability goes. Also, as consumers become more aware of climate change and environmental issues, they are starting to look for more sustainable options. This means real money-making opportunities for businesses who can appeal to those consumers first.
The government appears to be trying to put some kind of pressure on businesses to reduce emissions and pollution, but whether this translates into enforceable federal regulation is another matter. It seems that at the moment, most of the regulation happening to Coca-Cola’s products have to do with government efforts to regulate nutrition, i.e., heavily processed and sweetened foods.[xiv] Most of the biggest changes in regulation as far as environment and (for our purposes) canned water is concerned are happening at the state level like Northam’s state-institutional ban (EO77) on single use plastics.
4. Social/cultural/economic/political settings or related ecosystems
Unfortunately, this aforementioned economic market for sustainable products can (and often does) lead to greenwashing, which is either “the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company (firm-level greenwashing) or the environmental benefits of a product or service (product-level greenwashing).”[xv]
A great example of this is Coca-Cola’s own recent change in their plastic bottle labeling. I can’t seem to find a picture of it, but alongside their newly introduced 100% recycled plastic bottles, they also rebranded their regular 20 oz. bottles to say in very large and boastful font, “I’m 100% recyclable.” This could mislead uneducated consumers into thinking that because their bottle is theoretically 100% recyclable, putting it in the recycle bin means it will be 100% recycled. This is generally untrue for a number of reasons, the most concerning of which is the generally abysmal rate of plastic recycling. Thus, the “green” choice is in all likelihood very far from it.
In any case, it’s reasonably safe to say that consumers generally do want to make a more sustainable choice (all else being equal), if for no other reason than to make themselves feel better about their purchase. This trend will probably only continue, and it is both the government’s and corporations’ responsibility to not promote (in the first place) or at least prevent the promotion of misleading marketing and sustainability claims. Decisions like the one GMU made—namely, switching to cans—represent a good example of this sort of policymaking activity: ideally, making the scenario for consumers such that all they choices they have available to them are good ones. But is this true? Was switching to cans the right decision?
Setting marketing aside for now and focusing on somewhat ideal circumstances, the question I’m focusing on here is whether canned water is better choice than a plastic bottle—or, at least, whether Mason’s decision to switch to cans was a good idea from a policymaking standpoint.
As we saw in the aluminum section, the environmental impact of aluminum is largely dependent on its method of production (viz., fuel source) and its recyclability. A company as large as Coca-Cola likely uses a variety of aluminum suppliers, so it’s impossible for me to determine to what extent the Dasani cans on campus are made with fossil fuels or not. This leaves only the question of whether this aluminum is being recycled. The main problem here is that whether the used can actually ends up in the recycling bin or not (which, it should be mentioned, still does not necessarily mean it will actually make it to a recycling plant. However, that is largely beyond the individual consumers’ control); I call this a problem because changing consumer behavior can be very difficult, and from my own experience it seems to me that many people do not (or even do not want to) think very hard about their trash production. That’s not to say this can’t change, but it is certainly an obstacle.
5. What can we do?
It is tempting to suggest an outright ban on bottled water. This would theoretically eliminate the whole problem by forcing people to either bring a water bottle and use the many water bottle filling stations around campus, or to use a water fountain. In an ideal world this would be the solution. However, I do not recommend this (not yet at least) for two main reasons. First, other universities (like the University of Vermont) have tried to do this, and it generally has resulted in an increase in plastic bottle waste because it results in more bottled water being imported or brought onto campuses.[xvi] Second, if people are set on buying a drink from the vending machine, not having water will just result in people buying something other than water, which, given what it usually stocked in vending machines, will probably be something much unhealthier than water. Also, this would potentially cut into profits generated from vending, which as I’ve mentioned, go to scholarships for students.
Statistics regarding the aluminum can recycling rate on Mason’s campus don’t exist. They probably should—that’s my first suggestion. This is so because, as should be clear from my section on recycling and in the last section, aluminum cans are only superior to plastic if they are actually being recycled; if it’s going to end up in the landfill anyways, plastic is a better choice than aluminum from both an emissions and production (i.e., the local industrial pollution) perspective.[xvii] There may be no statistics, but from my firsthand observations of living on or right nearby campus for the last four years (and, as embarrassing as this might be to admit, spending a lot of time looking in trash and recycling bins to see what recycling is looking like), I can say that there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.
Therefore, to state it clearly, we can’t really know yet whether switching to cans was a good or bad idea because we don’t have enough data. We would need to know at the very least whether the can collection rate (assuming the average of 50% recycled material in the can) is high enough to beat out plastic. At this point, it could have been either a great idea and a huge success, or a terrible idea which has created more harm than good. Although we likely don’t have older statistics from the pre-can era to compare those hypothetical current statistics to, this isn’t an issue if we can demonstrate a high enough collection percentage. Connected to the recovery percentage is the overall purity of the cans/plastic/bottle waste stream.
The biggest issue I have noticed is that trash never gets sorted right—people put trash into recycle bins, and recycling into trash. This is disastrous, because when too much trash is put into a recycling bin, odds are the sanitation workers are just going to throw that recycling bag in the trash—as they rightfully should, because that bag is effectively not recycling, but trash with a few recyclable materials mixed in. The other issue I have noticed is that otherwise recyclable materials (PET bottles and cups for instance) are rendered unrecyclable because they have not been emptied and (if applicable) rinsed, or (if applicable) still have straws in them. Some also have difficult-to-remove food residue like a Frappuccino cups or yogurt.
My main and most important suggestion is to get the word out about what can be recycled, what can’t, and why. Most of the labelling on trash cans is minimal, and there could certainly be more detailed and eye-catching ones. I recommend a flyer (or multiple flyers which have different information on them, so people don’t visually tune them out. Maybe even a ‘trash spotlight’ flyer which focuses on just one piece of trash) or pamphlet (or both) which contains a sort of key, guide, or rubric to the most commonly disposed-of materials on campus and having those posted in relevant places and/or emailed out to people. Those materials could include: pizza boxes, to-go cups, bottles, cans, to-go containers, and soiled paper; also helpful could be general pieces of information like “when in doubt throw it out” etc.
Most important though is probably having some directly on/nearby trash cans. Most of the existing signs I see are small and easily ignorable; throwing an empty water can in the trash should, I argue, not be easy but in fact require willful ignorance of the large and clearly legible/decipherable notice/sign right around or in front of the trash receptacle which tells you not to do that. While some trash cans are labeled, this is just with text or vague pictures. I know that the minimalist font and graphics look nice, but when the minimalism gets in the way of effective recycling, it defeats the whole purpose of having recycling bins in the first place. I advocate for bigger, clearer pictures, since if a person is busy they probably will not take the time to read small font listed too far away from the trash can. The trash centers in Horizon (pictured below) are a good example of a lack of clear information.
To pick a single example here, “mixed paper” is pretty ambiguous, especially for someone who knows little about materials and recycling. I looked online and found a good (not perfect, but good enough) graphic made by the Landfill of North Iowa (below).
As you can see, there are both positive and negative examples. It’s fairly clear and does not require reading skills. We need something along these lines for every slot in the trash/recycling center. Again, I know it’s not as visually attractive, but it is certainly more effective.
A ream of paper is, at most, $10. Mason-focused flyers, brochures, pamphlets, etc. could easily be made in Microsoft publisher, word, or even PowerPoint in an hour. I made this rough mockup (below) in about 15 minutes using Word and Publisher. It doesn’t look that great (I’m studying philosophy and environmental policy, not digital design) but you should hopefully get the idea: this is easy to do, it won’t cost much, and it could make a serious difference in the quality of Mason’s recycling given the size of the campus and the amount of trash that goes through it.
I’m sure someone more creative than me can come up with a catchier and campaign centered around proper trash disposal. I’m sure you could even send someone out to talk in about classrooms before class starts. As I said, as long as it’s not too much work, I’m willing to bet most people want to do the right thing when it comes to throwing stuff away.
A few smaller suggestions follow.
- Encouraging reusable water bottles is good. There are filling stations everywhere (also a good thing. Thanks to whoever did that). If that cuts into vending profits, maybe Mason could find a way to make a portion of other things (maybe Mason-branded reusable bottles?) go towards those scholarships.
- Another suggestion (which I’m admittedly less sure about) is to use the resealable aluminum water cans Coca-Cola also came out with (pictured below). This could encourage those who are buying water (maybe because they forgot their reusable one or they can’t be bothered to lug one around and have to clean it) to maybe refill/reuse it a couple times. This suggestion should be indicated on a flyer which should be posted on or around the vending machine. On the other hand, if people like the resealable ones too much, maybe this could be an issue by encouraging more people to buy water cans. Then again, maybe this is only a serious issue if they’re not being recycled in the first place. Or, maybe, have both the sealable and ordinary style cans side by side (especially if one is more expensive) in the vending machine and see what works?
- This is related to (2), but my third suggestion is that I know Coca-Cola also came out with a “package-less” vending machine which offers sparkling and flavored water (also pictured below). Assuming a vending machine-like pay system could be implemented, something like this could be the sweet spot between encouraging bringing your own container, premium beverage options, and still making money off sales.
This being said I do want to say nice things about the existing efforts. The switch to aluminum cans is a big one and I don’t think too many people have been bold enough to do this yet. Taking a look at some of the upcoming sustainability plans, I don’t doubt things will change. I’ve noticed less people using single use bottles, and increasingly more people using reusable bottles. The bottle filling stations are also always great. My main point here is that I think people—at least, on a college campus—can be surprisingly responsive if you present them with good, clear, reasonable information that is easily accessible. Changing the culture around waste and sustainability is a crucial step towards improving the situation.
Footnotes
[i] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11032021/climate-change-refrigerator-hfc-super-pollutant/
[ii] Blowers, Paul, and James M. Lownsbury. “Carbon Dioxide Emission Implications If Hydrofluorocarbons Are Regulated: A Refrigeration Case Study.” Environmental Science & Technology, vol. 44, no. 5, 2010, pp. 1526–1529., https://doi.org/10.1021/es9023354.
[iii] https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/us-fridges-are-terrible-for-the-environment-but-that-could-change/
[iv] https://www.consumerreports.org/bottled-water/how-coke-and-pepsi-make-millions-from-bottling-tap-water-as-residents-face-shutoffs/ (This is a great read. I highly recommend it)
[v] Evans, Ken. “The History, Challenges, and New Developments in the Management and Use of Bauxite Residue.” Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, vol. 2, no. 4, 2016, pp. 316–331., https://doi.org/10.1007/s40831-016-0060-x.
[vi] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39503888
[vii] https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/10/04/what-do-we-get-out-it/human-rights-impact-bauxite-mining-guinea
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35340528
[viii] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-plastic-aluminium-factbox/factbox-aluminum-cans-get-boost-from-anger-over-plastic-pollution-idUSKBN1WW0KC
[ix] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, “Containers, Packaging, and Non-Durable Good Materials Chapters,” Documentation for Greenhouse Gas Emission and Energy Factors Used in the Waste Reduction Model (WARM). February 2016 https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-03/documents/warm_v14_containers_packaging_non-durable_goods_materials.pdf
[x] Carbon Trust. Carbon footprint of soft drinks packaging: A comparative analysis. December 2021. https://prod-drupal-files.storage.googleapis.com/documents/resource/public/Carbon_footprint_of_soft_drinks_packaging_report.pdf
[xi] http://budget.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/20budexecsumm.pdf
[xii] https://www.facebook.com/greengmu/photos/pcb.10158575461731025/10158575456166025
[xiii] https://www.deq.virginia.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/9664/637601348500700000
[xiv] Scrinis, Gyorgy. “CRFA – Big Food Corporations and the Nutritional Marketing and Regulation of Processed Foods.” Canadian Food Studies / La Revue Canadienne Des Études Sur L’alimentation, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. 136–145., https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i2.113.
[xv] Delmas, Magali A, and Vanessa Cuerel Burbano. “The Drivers of Greenwashing.” California Management Review, vol. 54, no. 1, 2011, https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/14016/cmr5401_04_printversion_delmasburbano.pdf.
[xvi] Choate, Beth, et al. “Campus Bottled Water Bans, Not Always the Solution.” International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, vol. 19, no. 5, 2018, pp. 987–997., https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe-06-2017-0089.
[xvii] This likely goes for a lot of other materials, too. For instance, paper grocery bags, if only used once and then disposed of, are probably not much better and are in fact probably much worse than plastic bags. The growth in paper bags is therefore, one possible unintended consequence with the new VA law taxing plastic shopping bags, or Northam’s EO77—ideally, paper bags should have been taxed something like 3 cents, to encourage reusables without incentivizing plastic.
Paper is very energy and water intensive since it requires growing pulp trees on a tree farm (which are a monoculture) and then a large paper mill to turn them into paper (lots of emissions). Also, when paper rots in the landfill it produces methane. Ideally those bags get recycled, but even then, that’s a lot of expense for a one-or-two use item. We need both reusables and recycling and composting to really make paper a better choice. Plastic is a serious problem, but simply switching to paper ignores the whole reason we stopped using paper and started using plastic in the first place.