A PROBLEM YOU CAN TASTE

Students eventually grew frustrated with the undrinkable water and wasteful plastic consumption, so they took matters into their own hands.

A group of student leaders brought a water sample to a lab and got it tested. The tests came back indicating that the water had a high lead content that failed to meet provincial standards.

Although Ontario is a North American leader for safe drinking water, an increasing number of schools are being found to have dangerous lead levels in their water.

Students brought this information to the school board hoping to get a filtration system set up so they could have access to clean drinking water and reduce plastic waste. Unfortunately, nothing was done.

The students decided to push back even harder. They brought the test results to the press, got teachers and parents Involved, and worked hard to raise awareness.

Eventually, the school board agreed that a change needed to happen.

A new filtration system was put into the drinking fountains and all plastic water bottles were removed from the school vending machines.

The students didn’t stop here. They continued to lobby to ban plastic bottles and encourage reusable ones, and they were successful.

Today, plastic water bottles have been banned from all schools in their respective school board.