University President Jehuda Reinharz, Aramark and Vice President of Campus Operations Mark Collins are working to implement a policy to ban the sale of bottled water on campus, according to an e-mail to the Justice from Reinharz on May 19. Reinharz wrote: "This process began as a result of several meetings I had with students who raised the issue as one of large scale campus concern. I feel a responsibility to take this issue seriously and to set an example on our campus."

He explained: "A decision like this involves many people on campus and will take a while to implement because we wish to consider alternatives to bottled water carefully. So far, student reaction to the action has been very positive."

"I object to selling water in containers that pollute our environment on our campus. Presently I am exploring ways to substitute other more earth-friendly ways to provide students access to clean, healthy water on our campus that does not involve non-biodegradable containers," Reinharz wrote.

"I am very pleased to see the high level of concern and interest in the environment that is taking place in many important and quantifiable ways on this campus," Reinharz added.

"This is a huge step for Brandeis," Danielle Hollenbeck-Pringle '10, the campus outreach coordinator for Students for Environmental Action wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

"What students can do now to become involved to improve the situation is to not go to Hannaford's or Costco or anywhere else to buy bottled water. Our tap water here in Waltham is great water. We should use it instead of using water from Vermont, India, or Georgia," she wrote.

SEA Vice President Sarah Levy '11 said that while the policy has not officially been declared, the ban will only include water and not soda or juice containers.

To help raise awareness about the water crisis around the world, Reinharz insisted on screening a documentary called Flow: For Love of Water on campus. Flow follows the stories of villages and communities in 12 countries fighting for clean water.

The documentary made its Boston premiere at Brandeis on May 1.

"I really enjoyed the film," said Matthew Schmidt '11, the president of SEA. "I found it very engaging, and it opened my eyes to an issue-the privatization of water throughout the world-that I had known little about."

The privatization of water, one of the main focuses of the film, involves companies pumping water from one area and selling it to people in another.

The event, sponsored by the Film Studies Program and the Edie and Lew Wasserman Fund, was followed by a Q-and-A session with Irena Salina, the film's director, and Shri Rajendra Singh, one of the water experts featured in the documentary.

Salina informed the audience of a petition on the film's Web site to add an article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proposing the right to clean drinking water.

The new article, Article 31, reads, "Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance."

"Before you start thinking about the third world, you need to start thinking about yourself," Singh said through a translator.

"The rivers and the lakes in the United States have been encroached upon; they are being polluted. Even your local water bodies that everybody thinks are safe from the various things that are happening in the third world are not," she said.

"It's a commendable endeavor to think about helping other people, but . all global problems have local solutions," he added.

In efforts to address such local solutions, SEA has been involved with the Think Outside the Bottle Campaign, which, according to its Web site, is a national campaign "working to promote, protect and ensure public funding for our public water systems."

Levy said SEA plan to raise awareness on campus about the detrimental effects of bottled water.

"We will continue to sell stainless steel water bottles on campus to try to give students an alternative to buying Dasani water bottles every time they need to drink water on the go," she said.

Schmidt said that the group will also "continue to work to eliminate bottled water use through awareness campaigns to educate students about the alternatives to bottled water.