Research
Ban the Bottle: Implementing a Ban on the
Sale of Plastic Water Bottles
at the University of Washington
Megan Curtis-Murphy
megancm3@gmail.
com
Evans School of Public
Affairs
MPA Candidate ‘14
Caroline Sessions
carrie.sessions@
gmail.com
Evans School of Public
Affairs
MPA Candidate ‘14
ABSTRACT
Many universities around the country have implemented a ban
on the sale of plastic water bottles. This benefit-cost analysis is an
ex-ante look at the economic impacts of implementing a program
on the University of Washington Seattle campus. The proposal we
detail passes a benefit-cost analysis and produces annualized net
benefits of $337,030 each year. Although it is widely believed that
these bans are important for environmental reasons, our analysis
shows that the actual environmental benefits from a ban are miniscule. The major benefit of the program is from the expenditures
students save by not purchasing bottled water; the major cost is
the Administration’s loss of revenue in the sale of these bottles.
The analysis shows that students receive most of the benefits of
a bottled water ban, while the Administration faces most of the
costs, raising questions about the likelihood of the Administration
initiating a ban, and the value in doing so. The analysis accounts
for a certain portion of students substituting to other beverages
and provides a sensitivity analysis on uncertain parameters.
Background
There is a growing nationwide movement to ban the
sale of single-use plastic water bottles sized one liter and less.
More than 70 universities in the United States have implemented
a campus-wide ban on the sale of plastic water bottles (Carapezza, 2013). Universities are not the only entities banning bottled water; fourteen national parks have implemented a ban and
last May, Concord Massachusetts became the first town to do so
(Abel 2010). Most of these entities cite environmental reasons as
the motivation for implementing a ban.
Though the movement is gaining traction, there have
been neither formal program evaluations of the bans nor any indepth analysis of the economic repercussions. Both Seattle University (SU) and the University of Vermont (UVM) published
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Curtis-murphy, Sessions
qualitative evaluations of implementing single-use water bottle bans (Price 2013
and UVM 2013). These resources provide insight into how students worked with
the school administration regarding policy adoption and implementation, but give
little perspective on the economic effects of the ban. In this benefit-cost analysis, we
seek to predict the economic consequences of the University of Washington (UW or
the University) implementing a ban on its Seattle campus. This analysis will serve to
inform the larger discussion on the value of the proposed bans.
The Proposal
Under our proposal, the program begins with an education and awareness
campaign in January of a given year, and then imposes a ban on the sale of plastic
water bottles on the UW campus starting in September. Similar to most programs
nationwide, the ban would be for single-use plastic water bottles that are one liter
or less. We recommend that the Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF) hire a new staff
member who would be responsible for launching the campaign and working with all
university departments affected by the ban, including Housing and Food Services,
Facilities, and Recycling & Solid Waste. We expect the staff member to work 20
hours a week in the first year to start the campaign and then just five hours per week
to maintain the ban in future years.
As part of the education and awareness campaign, the CSF staff member
would coordinate the distribution of 1,500 reusable aluminum bottles at the start
of the school year, as publicity for the campaign. He/she would also work with the
facilities department to install new water fountains and retrofit others to meet the
increased demand for tap water. Based on research from other schools, we recommend installing 20 new water filling stations and retrofitting 170 water fountains
with easy-fill spigots around campus.
Our proposal is modeled using information from schools that have already
implemented a ban. We spoke with two individuals involved in the campaigns at
Seattle University and Portland State University. Additionally, several online reports
about specific bans, helped inform our analysis (see References).
Methodology and Assumptions
Standing: As the bottle ban would be implemented on the UW central campus, the
accounting stance for this analysis is limited to the UW Seattle community, comprised of students, faculty, and staff. It is possible that businesses off-campus could
benefit due to increased sales or that Coca-Cola would incur costs due to a decrease
in sales, but both these groups are outside the scope of this analysis.
Discount rate: We use a discount rate of 3.5 % in our analysis as the effects of
VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 45
Implementing a Ban on the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles at UW
the proposal are intragenerational (Moore 2007). The Washington State Institute for
Public Policy (WSIPP) also uses a 3.5% discount rate. WSIPP was created by the
Washington Legislature to provide practical and non-partisan research at the direction of the legislature. The University of Washington is a public university so it is
funded in part through the state budget thus it makes sense to use WSIPP’s discount
rates.
Reason for annualizing: Traditionally, benefit-cost analyses are performed for a
designated time period, and benefits and costs are discounted over that lifetime.
However, for the plastic water bottle ban, the majority of the costs and benefits accrue in the same increments every year. For this reason, we believe it is more useful
for the University to consider the ban in terms of total annualized cost, or the cost of
having the ban in place for that year. We have annualized the upfront costs, a method
that averages capital costs over the lifetime of the project, while accounting for inflation and the social rate of time preference. We add to that the ongoing net benefits,
giving us a yearly annualized cost. By annualizing the cost, decision-makers can see
the annual cost to the University, which is important for budgeting purposes and allows for annual approval if needed.
We have assessed the project based on a 15-year lifespan of the water fountains. We determined the average lifespan by speaking with a representative from
Elkay, the company from which UW purchases the fountains (Elkay 2013).
Substitution effect: Should bottled water be unavailable to buy on the UW campus,
it is reasonable to assume that not all students will switch to using water fountains.
We refer to the proportion of students who switch to buying other beverages as the
substitution rate. Unfortunately, there is little existing literature on consumer preferences for bottled water, the elasticity of demand for bottled water, or estimates
on the substitution rate. A widely cited study, conducted by the American Water
Works Association Research Foundation in 1993, found that 35% of bottled water
drinkers choose water as a substitute for other beverages; the remaining percentages
choose it due to taste, smell, and concerns about tap water safety (Doria 2006). We
assume that if 35% of bottled water drinkers choose water as a substitute for other
beverages, they would substitute back to other beverages if bottled water were not
available. Therefore, we use 35% as our baseline estimate of the substitution rate
throughout our analysis.
Impact Categories
Banning the sale of plastic water bottles on the UW campus will incur a
wide range of monetary and nonmonetary effects on a diverse set of stakeholders.
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The impact categories that we analyze include:
Costs
Increased Water Usage
Loss in Revenue from Sale of Water Bottles
New and Retrofitted Water Fountains
Cost of Launching Ban (Salary/Admin/Publicity
Bottles)
Health Costs from Substitution
Benefits
Decreased Recycling Costs
Saved Expenditures
Environmental Benefits
We also consider other impact categories that we were not able to monetize.
First, there are most likely reputational benefits for the school in implementing this
program because it adds to the school’s sustainability initiatives. The University has
an Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability website that highlights the school’s
awards and recognitions, including a Green School Honor Roll Status and a top
ranking in the Sierra Club’s Cool Schools Guide (UW Environmental Stewardship
website). Although no single initiative is responsible for these awards, the University
must continue to build their green portfolio to sustain these ratings.
One cost that we were not able to monetize is the effect on the school’s contract with Coca-Cola. In an interview, the Campus Sustainability Manager at Seattle
University said that it was not a problem to renegotiate the contract with Coca-Cola
to exclude plastic water bottles (Price 2013). However, in conversations with UW
Dining Services, we were told that the existing contract would preclude the University from dropping any Coca-Cola product (Meyering 2013). We were not able
to obtain any further details about the contract and its costs, so this impact remains
fairly uncertain and leaves a gap in our analysis.
Additionally, we assessed whether there would be welfare loss from students
not being able to buy bottled water on campus. A study published in Water Resources Research found that perception of risk induces existing water-bottle-buyers
to buy more bottled water, but does not motivate them to buy bottled water in the
first place (Jakus 2009). From this, we extrapolate that most buyers will not feel a
loss from having to switch to tap water. Those committed buyers who purchase as
a function of risk perception will likely travel off-campus to buy bottled water. As
the monetary value of this welfare loss and increased time spent walking to an offcampus vendor would be highly speculative, we are not including it in our analysis.
We also considered time savings in this analysis. We determine it to be insignificant
because people would spend about the same amount of time either filling their water bottle or buying a plastic water bottle from a vending machine or food service
station.
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Implementing a Ban on the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles at UW
Benefits
Decreased Recycling Costs: $37,270
The first benefit is the saved expenditures the school will receive from recycling and disposing of fewer plastic water bottles. The UW Recycling & Solid Waste
Department produces an annual report that lists their expenditures on all recycling
and solid waste categories. Plastic water bottles fall into the Mixed Recyclables category that includes mixed containers, single-stream recycling and plastics (UW Annual Report 2012). Although a small number of water bottles are disposed of in
the trash each year, the majority is recycled so we only included the cost of mixed
recyclables.
The Recycling & Solid Waste Manager reported that UW spends
$745,323.87 on the recycling program, which includes the cost of disposal paid to
vendors, labor, fuel and other costs (Newcomer 2013). In order to determine what
percent of recycling is from plastic water bottles, we performed our own trash audit
on the UW campus. We surveyed recycling bins in Suzzallo, Odegaard, Parrington
Hall and the HUB (the student center that houses several food vendors). We found
that about 5% of mixed recycling is from water bottles. Thus, by banning the sale of
plastic water bottles on campus, it would save about $37,270 in recycling costs.
Saved Student Expenditures: $593,940
The proposed ban would in fact save students, faculty, and staff money
because they would no longer be able to purchase water bottles on campus. The
UW Housing and Food Services informed us that UW buys and sells about 50,000
20-ounce plastic water bottles a month for a price of $1 each (Meyering 2013). They
sell these bottles for $1.79. Thus, people on campus are spending about $1,074,000
on plastic water bottles each year. We surveyed the options of other beverages on
campus and found an average drink price of $2.28.1 In order to calculate the saved
expenditures we incorporated the substitution rate of 35% of people buying other
beverages, which resulted in $593,940 in savings.
Environmental Benefits: $0.0006
The main rationale for campuses banning the sale of plastic water bottles is
to reduce environmental impact. Although the production, distribution and disposal
of these bottles have environmental costs, they are fairly minimal in the economic
sense when compared with other benefits. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) has performed an extensive lifecycle analysis on plastic water
bottles (ODEQ 2009). The study was commissioned by the ODEQ to provide in1 We could not determine the exact beverages people would substitute to so we took the average
cost of several beverages including juice, flavored water, soda and Odwalla beverages.
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formation to consumers and producers about different water delivery systems, and
to highlight the environmental principle of reducing first and recycling second. The
study concludes that drinking tap water in reusable bottles is the most environmentally friendly way to consume and obtain water.
We used this analysis to provide a shadow value for the reduced damages to
the climate, or global warming potential as the ODEQ study refers to it, of not buying and selling these bottles on campus. The study uses a basecase scenario of a typical 16.9-ounce water bottle with 13.3 grams of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)
that has traveled 50 miles. The lifecycle analysis is based on the production2, processes3, and end of life management4 of the plastic water bottle. The study reports
that for every 1,000 gallons of water produced, there are 1,121 pounds of carbon
dioxide equivalent emitted. We extrapolate this information for the UW 20-ounce
bottles and get 62.19 tons of carbon equivalent per year. To monetize this amount,
we use the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Social Cost of Carbon, which
estimates the economic damages due to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions
(EPA 2013). For each metric ton, there are $39 worth of damages to the climate,
including net agricultural productivity, human health, and property damages.5 As the
EPA is a federal agency, the social cost of carbon is on a nationwide scale. To calculate the dollar amount for just the UW accounting stance, we found the percent of
nationwide population that UW students comprise. This totaled $0.0006, which is
less than 1 cent of damages to the climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change reports that the EPA’s social cost of carbon is probably a low estimate; however, even with a higher dollar amount, it is unlikely the environmental benefits for
UW would be significant (EPA 2013).
Upfront Costs
New and retrofitted water fountains: $122,500
Under our proposal, the school would retrofit 170 existing water fountains
to have a special spigot for filling water bottles. In addition, we would install 20
Elkay Filling Stations in locations that already have access to plumbing. We decided
to install and improve 190 fountains based on information from SU and UVM. Using
their data, we found that both schools installed or improved one fountain for every
0.006 students.We then applied this ratio to the UW population, reaching 190 fountains in total. The cost of buying the materials and installation is $450 for retrofits
and $2,300 for new filling stations (Price 2013). The total cost for the university is
2 Production includes the disposable bottle, cap and closures, and secondary packaging.
3 Process includes water processing, filling, distribution, consumer transport, water treatment,
and chilling.
4 End of life management includes the containers, caps and closures, and secondary packing.
5 $39 per metric ton of carbon dioxide at a 3.5% discount rate in 2015.
VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 49
Implementing a Ban on the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles at UW
$122,500.
Publicity bottles: $3,680
To gain student support and publicize the ban, we propose that the University distribute 1,500 aluminum reusable bottles in Red Square. A quick Google search
found that a standard cost for bottles bought in bulk is $2.45 per bottle. We decided
to distribute 1,500 bottles as this seemed a sufficient number to attract buzz and attention in Red Square. This cost totals $3,680. We acknowledge that 1,500 supplies
bottles to only a fraction of the students. However, we assume that the vast majority
of students already own a water bottle (reusable or plastic) and will not purchase one
consequent to this ban. The publicity bottles purely for marketing purposes.
Administrative costs: $12,800
In shaping our proposal, we considered what administrative and logistical
support would be necessary to plan and implement the ban. We determined that the
University should employ an additional staff member at the Campus Sustainability
Fund (CSF) and launch a campus-wide education campaign. Most CSF employees
are paid hourly at $13 per hour. With the staff member working 20 hours per week
for 30 weeks a year (Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters), the total cost is $7,800.
Speaking with a student who was involved with the ban at Portland State University, we learned that a comprehensive education campaign was instrumental in gaining student support and reducing the substitution to other bottled drinks (Kutner
2013). For this reason, we allocated $5,000 to print and distribute education materials and host events to garner public support.
Ongoing Yearly Costs
Increased water usage: $38,610 per year
Because more students will use water from fountains, the University will
need to pay for more tap water from the utility company. Currently, students and
staff buy 12 million ounces of bottled water per year, equivalent to 12,532 CCF per
year (Cook 2013).6 Assuming that 65% of buyers will switch to tap water, demand
for tap water will increase by 8,146 CCF per year. At a price of $4.74 per CCF, increased demand will yield a rise in UW’s water bill of $38,610.
Lost revenue to Food Services: $233,760 per year
Currently, UW Housing and Food Services sells approximately 50,000 bottles of water per month (Meyering 2013). By purchasing each bottle for roughly
6 We assume that students will consume the same amount of water as before, regardless of the size
of the container.
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$1 and selling it for $1.79, the University makes $0.79 profit on each bottle. If the
University was to implement the ban and all of these students stopped buying drinks,
the University would lose $474,000 in profits.
Using our baseline substitution rate, however, we assume that only 65% of
original sales will be lost to tap water. The remaining 35% of sales (totaling 17,500
bottles per month) will go towards the purchase of other drinks. An informal survey of beverages sold on campus indicated that the average price for other drinks is
$2.28 per bottle. A representative from Housing and Food Services informed us that
they make roughly a 50% profit on drinks, meaning that they would accrue $1.14
in profit. Thus, if the University were to sell an additional 17,500 bottles of “other
drinks”, they would recoup $20,020 of the lost revenue per month. Accounting for
the loss in sales of water, this totals a loss in revenue of $233,760 per year.
Maintenance of new water fountains: $6,790 per year
The new water fountains will require maintenance and upkeep during their
15-year lifespan. Based on a brief conversation with the water fountain manufacturer, we estimate that on average, fountains and filling stations will require a $250
maintenance once every five years (Elkay 2013). With 190 new fountains and filling
stations, this equates to an average cost of $6,790 per year.
Ongoing administrative costs: $2,950 per year
Within our proposal, we plan to keep a CSF staff member employed
throughout the duration of the ban. While the bulk of his/her work will occur during the first year, we anticipate that there will be a minimal amount of ongoing
work needed. We envision that duties during two to fourteen will include answering
questions about the ban, continuing the education campaign, and perhaps conducting a small program evaluation. In our proposal, we budget for employing the staff
member for an average of five hours per week for 30 weeks a year. At their salary of
$13 per hour, this cost totals $1,950 per year. We acknowledge that there could be
additional costs of employment for the Administration, such as paying benefits and
taxes, but we believe these fees to be negligible.
We project that it will be beneficial to have a smaller ongoing education
campaign to keep incoming students informed on the ban and the rationale behind it.
We estimate the cost of printing and distributing materials, holding publicity booths
in Red Square, and bringing in related speakers will cost no more than $1,000 per
year. Thus, we conservatively estimate that the total ongoing administrative costs
will be $2,950 per year.
Long-term health costs: $0.0014 per year
VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 51
Implementing a Ban on the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles at UW
Banning the sale of plastic water bottles on the UW campus may cause students to switch to drinking other beverages with a higher sugar content. According
to an article published in the Journal of Health Affairs, people who switch to sodas or
other “sugary drinks” could be at a greater risk for diabetes, thereby increasing their
health burden on society (Wang 2012).
The article investigated the monetary savings in healthcare costs of implementing a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The authors estimated the potential
reductions in obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other associated medical
costs that would result from a “penny-per-ounce” tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.
As part of their findings, the authors estimated that over a 10-year period there is
roughly one cent of such costs per ounce of beverage consumed. We use this finding
as a shadow value for the social cost of consuming sugary beverages.
Using a 35% substitution rate, we predict that students will consume
420,000 more ounces of other beverages (all of which we assume are more sugary
than water). This yields a $4,200 cost to society over 10 years, or $6,300 over the
lifetime of our project. However, because we are only assessing the increased cost
to the UW community, we divided this number by the percentage of the entire US
population that the UW community comprises and found only $0.0014 in yearly
costs to the campus community.7 Thus, while the health impacts are an important
aspect for the administration to consider, the actual cost incurred is negligible.
Aggregated Costs and Benefits
The following table summarizes the upfront costs, yearly costs, and yearly
benefits of implementing the ban:
Upfront Costs
Water fountain retrofits:$122,500
Publicity bottles
$3,680
Administrative costs:
$12,800
Subtotals
$138,980
Total Yearly Net Benefits
Annualized Net Benefits Per Year
Yearly Costs
Yearly Benefits
Increased water
Decreased recycling
usage: $38,610
costs: $37,270
Loss in sales revenue:
Saved student ex$233,760
penses: $593,940
Administrative costs:
Environmental ben$2,950
efits: < $0.01
Maintenance costs: $6,790
Health costs: < $0.01
$282,110
$631,210
$349,100
337,030
7 For the US population, we used the US Census Bureau’s estimate of 313.9 million. For the UW
population, we used 72,139 people, including staff, students, and faculty (obtained from US News
and World Report)
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To annualize the costs, we divided the upfront costs by the annuity factor,
which is a function of the discount rate (0.035) and the project lifespan (15 years).
This yielded an annualized cost of $12,070 per year. Adding the yearly net benefits,
we find that the ban should yield positive net benefits of $337,030 each year.
Kaldor-Hicks
The plastic water bottle ban passes a benefit-cost analysis, but there are clear
winners and losers that can be observed in the Kaldor-Hicks Tableau below (Krutilla
2007). It is ultimately the University Administration that will decide whether or not
to implement a ban on plastic water bottles, and to continue it on a yearly basis. The
table shows that the UW Administration is would clearly take on the economic burden of a water bottle ban. The largest benefit, saved expenditures, goes to students
who are currently buying bottles of water, whereas the largest cost, loss in revenue
from the sale of water bottles, is the responsibility of the Administration. The University pays for all expenses but only receives one major benefit, the saved cost of
recycling fewer bottles. It is likely that the University would receive reputational
benefits as well, but again, this could not be monetized. The Kaldor-Hicks tableau is
important to this analysis as we expect potential pushback from the administration in
implementing a ban since they have the burden of the costs with very little concrete
benefits.
Kaldor-Hicks Tableau
Administration
Students/Faculty/
Staff
Yearly Costs
Increased Water Usage
$38,610
$0
Water Fountain Mainte$6,790
$0
nance
Loss in Revenue From Sale
$233,760
$0
of Water Bottles
Administrative Costs
$2,950
$0
Health Costs from Substi$.001
$0.001
tution
Yearly Benefits
Decreased Recycling Costs
$37,270
$0
Saved Expenditures
$0
$593,940
Environmental Benefits
$0.0006
$0.0006
Yearly Net Benefits
-$244,880
$593,940
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Implementing a Ban on the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles at UW
Sensitivity Analysis
Though our initial analysis finds positive yearly net benefits, it is important
to examine the robustness of this finding. By varying parameters about which we are
uncertain (or not confident in their accuracy), we are able to evaluate the probability
that the proposal will yield positive net benefits. We conducted both a Monte Carlo
simulation and a breakeven analysis to assess the robustness of our proposal.
There are three parameters about which we are uncertain: the substitution
rate to other beverages, the cost of water, and the cost of long-term health effects.
The following tornado chart gives a visual indication of the range and importance of
each variable:
Total Annualized Benefits
0.90
0.10
Rate of Subsitution
Cost of Water
9.62
4.06
Health Costs
0.02
0.00
-$2
00,
000
$0
$20
0,0
00
$40
0,0
00
$60
0,0
00
Substitution to Other Beverages: Thus far in our analysis, we have assumed that
35% of the UW community would buy other beverages rather than using the water
fountain for tap water. We ascertained this estimate from the study described in the
Methodology and Assumptions section. However, we have reservations about basing
our analysis on one study that was conducted almost 30 years ago. Out of our own
interest, we conducted a brief and rudimentary poll of fellow students to roughly
gauge their rate of substitution.8 Of the 30 respondents, only 19% indicated that
they would buy a different beverage. These results suggest that the substitution rate
is variable and largely unknown. Thus in our sensitivity analysis, we fully varied the
substitution rate between 0 and 100%9, indicating that it could be anywhere in that
range. Overall, we found that variation in the substitution rate accounted for 98.4%
of the variation in total annualized net benefits.
Using a breakeven analysis, we found that an 11% substitution rate would
yield neutral annualized net benefits (costing $0 per year). This means that so long as
10% of the campus community or more uses the water fountains rather than buying
other beverages, the ban would pass a benefit-cost analysis. Given our prediction that
the true substitution rate is higher than 10%, we believe that it is quite likely that it
passes a benefit-cost analysis.
8 The poll presented students with a hypothetical scenario in which they were no longer able to
purchase bottled water, then asked them about how they would adapt their choice of beverages.
9 With a uniform distribution.
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Cost of Water: In speaking with Joe M. Cook, the Facilities Project Engineer at UW,
we postulate that the price of water could rise substantially during the ban. Mr. Cook
mentions that the combined rate for sewage and water has risen about 9% per year
since 2002; he estimates that the rate could increase by 10% per year for the foreseeable future (Cook 2013). For this reason, we decided to vary the unit cost of water;
we use a lowerbound of $4.74 (the current rate) and an upperbound of $13.07,
which represents the annualized cost of a 10% increase per year for 14 years.We find
that variation in the unit cost of water is responsible for less than 2% of the variation
in the annualized net benefits, a quite small proportion. If the price of water does
rise by 10% annually, the ban will yield positive net benefits of $277,080 annually.
Health Costs: Lastly, we were not confident in our estimate of the long-term health
costs caused by students switching to sugar-sweetened beverages. In the study we
cited, the penny-per-ounce cost was only a rough estimate of the social costs. For
this reason, we varied this cost on a uniform distribution between $0.00 and $0.02.
However, because the total health costs were miniscule to begin with (less than
$0.01 per year), varying this amount makes little to no difference in our analysis.The
Monte Carlo simulation indicates that health costs account for 0% of the variability
in our total annualized cost. Despite this finding, we still believed it was necessary to
vary this component, as we lacked confidence in the true rate.
After accounting for the variation in these three inputs, we find that the
ban would have an average annualized net benefit of $224,706 and yield positive annualized net benefits 88% of the time. The following graph shows the resulting net
benefits from 10,000 trials; positive net benefits are shown in the darker grey.
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Implementing a Ban on the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles at UW
Recommendation and Conclusion
Benefit-cost analysis is one tool for decision-making. Though it provides
an important perspective on the economic impacts of a proposed project, it rarely
should be used in isolation. From our analysis, we are confident that should the University implement a ban on the sale of plastic water bottles, the program is likely to
yield positive annualized net benefits when viewed from the perspective of the entire
UW community.
Though the proposed ban is likely to have positive net benefits, we do not
believe the UW should implement the ban solely on this reasoning. The heavy burden of costs on the administration and uncertainty regarding the contract with CocaCola are important considerations that should cause pause. Furthermore, the majority of costs and benefits is largely a transfer from the administration to students.
The external benefits gained from instituting the ban, namely the environmental
benefits, turn out to be negligible. Therefore, we make the following insights and
recommendations:
• As the environmental benefits are quite small, the Administration
should not institute a ban based on environmental rationale. There
may be environmental spillover and reputational benefits, but it will
not actually yield a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
or other substantive environmental benefits.
• Should students advocate for a water bottle ban for “feel good” or
reputational benefits, the administration should not lobby against it
on an economic rationale. When considering the welfare of the entire
UW community, there are actually net benefits to instituting the ban.
In order to make this benefit-cost analysis more useful for decision-makers at the University, we recommend further research on the current contract with
Coca-Cola, as well as options for renegotiations. As other schools have been able to
successfully negotiate on this point and implement a ban, we do not see this as a potential impasse. However, should the University move forwards with considering a
ban, more detailed analysis on the risks and financial impacts of contract negotiation
will be imperative.
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shot_in_ water_battle/
Carapezza, Kirk. “Better Bring your Own: University of Vermont Bans Bottled Water.” National Public Radio, January 14, 2013. Available from: http://www.
npr.org/2013/01/14/169284372/better-bring-your-own-university-ofvermont-bans-bottled-water
Doria, Miguel. “Bottled Water versus Tap Water: Understanding Consumer Preferences.” Journal of Water and Health: 04.2: 2006. Available from: http://
www.iwaponline.com/jwh/004/0271/0040271.pdf
Environmental Protection Agency, “Social Cost of Carbon”. Updated 2013. Available
from: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/EPAactivities/economics/scc.
html
Jakus, Paul, W. Douglass Shaw, N. Nguyen, and Mark Walker. “Risk Perceptions of
Arsenic in Tap Water and Consumption of Bottled Water.” Water Resources
Research, Vol. 25, 2009. Available from: https://drive.google.com/?tab=
wo&authuser=0#folders/0B5Q1twbBwAo1dnZPdUxtYnZaSnM
Krutilla, Kerry. “Using the Kaldor-Hicks Tableau Format for Cost-Benefit Analysis
and Stakeholder Evaluation.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
864-875, Fall 2005.
Moore, Mark A., Anthony E. Boardman, et al., “Just Give Me a Number! Practical
Values for the Social Discount Rate” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, v23 n4 p789-812, 2004.
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, “Life Cycle Assessment of Drinking
Water Systems: Bottle Water, Tap Water, and Home/Office Delivery Water.”
Prepared by Franklin Associates, October 22, 2009, Available from: http://
www.deq.state.or.us/lq/pubs/docs/sw/LifeCycleAssessmentDrinkingWaterFullReport.pdf
Price, Karen. “Seattle University, Seattle Washington, Water Case Study” National
Wildlife Federation: Campus Ecology. 2012. Available from: http://www.
seattleu.edu/uploadedFiles/Sustainability/Content/What_SU_is_Doing/
NWF%20Campus%20Ecology%20case%20study%20on%20SU%20bottled%20water%20ban.pdf
University of Vermont Office of Sustainability: website. Available from: http://
www.uvm.edu/sustain/bottledwater (Accessed 6 December 2013).
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Implementing a Ban on the Sale of Plastic Water Bottles at UW
University of Washington Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability Available
from: http://f2.washington.edu/ess/promote/uw-awards (Accessed 2
December 2013)
University of Washington Recycling & Solid Waste 2012 Annual Report. Available
from: http://www.washington.edu/facilities/building/recyclingandsolidwaste/files/report2012/index.html (Accessed 2 Dec. 2013)
Wang, Claire Y, Pamela Coxson, Yu-Ming Shen, Lee Goldman, and Kirsten BibbinsDomingo. “A Penny-PerOunce Tax on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Would Cut Health and Cost Burdens of
Diabetes.” Health Affairs 31:1 (2012): 199-207. Available from: http://
content.healthaffairs.org/content/31/1/199.full.pdf
Personal Contacts (Interviews and Emails)
All correspondence conducted between Oct. 1 and Nov. 15, 2013
Elkay Water Fountains, Customer Service Representative
Emily Newcomer, Recycling and Solid Waste Manager, University of Washington
Laura Kutner, former student at Portland State University
Joe M. Cook, PE, Facilities Project Engineer, University of Washington
Karen Price, Campus Sustainability Manager, Seattle University
Michael Meyering, Business and Sustainability Manager for Dining Services, University of Washington
58 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW