There’s an evil presence lurking around campus these days. It inhabits the lunchline, the quad, and the trash bins. It’s ugly, plastic, and environmentally disastrous. If you guessed bottled water, give yourself a pat on the back.

Think about it. It’s normal water, right? According to CNN, popular brands Dasani and Aquafina are simply purified tap water.

In fact, it’s quite possible that bottled water is actually less safe than the water that comes out of the drinking fountains, because tap water is subject to far greater government regulation. For example, the BBC reported in 2004 that Dasani was removed from the British market after it was found to contain bromate, a suspected carcinogen.

Moreover, according to USA Today, the bottled water that does come from an actual spring or artesian well is no better than municipal water. There is not to my knowledge a company that markets water bottled from Lourdes.

Curious as to why anyone would wish to squander their money in such a foolish manner, I asked food director Jennifer Adams why there is such demand for bottled water.

“It’s convenient,” she replied.

Am I the only one who thinks this is an incredibly silly reason to buy at great cost something that you can get for free and of the same quality from a drinking fountain? Convenient. Is it really that difficult or time-consuming to drink out of a re-usable water bottle?

Many students believe that the water that comes out of the drinking fountain tastes bad.

“It’s kind of disgusting,” sophomore Ryan Paw said.

But ABC News conducted blind taste tests that show people often couldn’t tell the difference between tap and bottled water. And even if you seriously dislike the admittedly unique taste of our drinking fountain water, is bottled water really worth the price, which is currently higher than gasoline?

Consider the environmental implications of bottled water. According to the Web site Refill Not Landfill, in 2006 Americans drank about 50 billion plastic bottles of water a year. Only 23 percent of them got recycled.

That left roughly 38 billion bottles to litter the sides of our roads and fill our landfills. 38 billion. It’s a big number. And if each of those bottles is 0.5 liters, the space they take up is almost 20 times the volume of the Empire State Building, which is one million cubic meters. Picture it. It’s an awful lot of waste for “convenience.”

Granted, the school isn’t doing all it could to encourage students to use the drinking fountain rather than buy water from the lunchline. The drinking fountain in the high school is in poor condition, because of student vandalism. It would be nice if someone would fix it.

Additionally, why doesn’t the Student Council sell re-usable water bottles? It would bring in funds for Council activities, as well as encourage environmental responsibility in the student body.

But failing those, it’s still our duty as citizens of this planet to preserve and protect it with responsible water usage. Invest in a re-usable water bottle, Nalgene or something else. It’s really a very easy way to do your part to take care of this planet, the only one around that we can use.

I think it’s worth protecting.