The DU Sustainability Committee will sponsor the documentary ‘Tapped’ as a part of the Colorado Environmental Film Festival (CEFF) Friday from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in Davis Auditorium of Sturm Hall.
In conjunction with this film about the harm that bottled water causes, the committee will be petitioning to decrease the usage of bottled water on campus.
This film is free to all DU students as well as the surrounding community. It is the only free movie being shown during the three-day festival.
According to the DU Sustainability Committee Web site, the film is a “behind-the-scenes look at the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never become a commodity: our water.”
The documentary begins in the bottling plant and goes through the selling process and shows how the bottles waste away in landfills.
Director Stephanie Soechtig hopes that this documentary raises questions about the public’s right to water and how they are using the water they have, both bottled and tapped.
DU Sustainability Committee President Dillon Doyle was approached by Joe Brown, co-chair of the Colorado Environmental Film Festival, about working with them to sponsor this event.
Doyle said, “It would be much more salient and have much more impact for DU students and the greater Denver community to bring a showing [of “Tapped”] to campus.”
Doyle added that he hopes that many students will attend this event because he feels it directly affects young people and how they live their lives while it confronts important sustainability issues.
Brown said, “The pollution caused by the bottled water industry negatively affects human health because of the plastics used in the bottles and the environment.”
He added that he hopes that students and others who attend the film will be motivated to change how they use bottled water and how they think about changing this problem.
A few short environmental films will be shown before the showing of “Tapped.”
The film’s producers will be in attendance and will participate in a question-and-answer session after the film.
The petition that will be passed around prior to the event will ask the administration to reduce the amount of bottled water that DU uses by not giving out bottled water to the community as a marketing device, not selling bottled water on campus except at sporting events, increasing the number of drinking fountains on campus and increasing education about the harms of bottled water.
Doyle said, “We give [bottled water] out for free to market our university, which seemingly goes against our principles and goals of a sustainable future.”
At the presentation of the film, the Sustainability Committee will have a surprise event in conjunction with the petition.
