Squaw Valley To Outlaw Bottled Water Sales In Favor of Increased Water Refill Stations

Squaw Valley is taking a bold initiative to reduce the amount of garbage produced by the resort by prohibiting bottled water sales and installing 20 water refill stations around the mountain. Squaw expects to eliminate as many as 28,000 single-use plastic bottles a year with this simple step towards environmentally friendly hydration. Wastefulness is tastelessness….stay classy and drink tap.

“Jeremy Jones announces Squaw Valley | Alpine Meadows new “Drink Mtn Tap – Fresh Taste Without Waste program. The program involves discontinuing the sale of bottled water at most all of our F&B and Retail locations, with the exception of Starbucks and the Ice Bar at Alpine. Over 20 new water fountain and refill stations have been installed across both resorts, so it is easier for everyone to stay hydrated and refill their water bottles. The core message behind this is to get people to rethink using single-use products and to choose reusable items over disposable ones whenever possible, especially when it comes to water. Bottled water is simply unnecessary when you have access to clean water and we are lucky to have great tasting tap water here in the Tahoe region. Each year, this program will remove at least 28,000 plastic bottles from our waste stream—80% of which would never make it to the recycling bin. Our new offering to guests is a reusable 16.9 oz., BPA free collapsible water bottle, sold at the same price point as bottled water ($3) and features images from Squaw and Alpine to make it a great souvenir item as well. Refill, reuse, and reduce single-use.”

8 reasons why Squaw is taking this initiative:

1. Each year, the United States uses 17 million barrels of oil to produce single-use plastic water bottles.
2. 40 billion single plastic bottles end up in our landfills and oceans each year in the United States.
3. Imagine a single-use plastic bottle ¼ full of oil. This is how much petroleum is needed to produce one plastic bottle.
4. Fill a single-use plastic bottle three times and dump it out. That is how much water is wasted to produce a single plastic bottle.
5. Only 1 in 5 single-use plastic bottles end up being recycled—80% end up in our world’s oceans and landfills.  
6. On average, a gallon of California tap water costs less than a penny. When compared to tap, bottled water can be 500 to 1,000 times more expensive.
7. If you were to drink the recommended 64 ounces of water per day in bottled water, you would waste 1,382 standard size plastic bottles every year.
8. A plastic bottle is not biodegradable and will take over 1,000 years to degrade in a landfill. 

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