Parkview Students Ask: What's Your Carbon Paw Print?

Michael Tolmich has this thing about disposable water bottles.

He hates them.

As an environmental science teacher at , Tolmich can rattle off some rattling facts: Of the 60 billion disposable drink containers bought in 2006, about 45 billion ended up in the trash. About 10 percent of the plastic produced each year worldwide ends up in the ocean, and every square mile of ocean has 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in it. About 70 percent of that ends up on the ocean floor, where it probably never will degrade.

So, Tolmich and his wife came up with an idea. They spent around $500 of their own money to buy 300 of those reusable sports bottles. Some of his students -- Haleh Bakhtiari, McCall Mullee, Martina Stewart, Maren Moss and Terra Freking -- helped Tolmich come up with the plan: During lunch at the school, students drinking from a plastic water bottle were given one of the sports bottles if they pledged not to buy bottled water.

"It's been a passion of mine for years," Tolmich said of the plastic bottles. "We feel really passionate about it." The students spearheaded the project, "helping my passion become reality," he said.

Tolmich thought it would take a few days to distribute the bottles, but they were all gone in one day recently.

"We hope this planted a seed," Tolmich said. "Enough of a seed that a grant or sponsorship could pop up to help fund it and help it grow," since the couple can't continue to spend $500 for water bottles.

The 300 bottles distributed will mean 600 fewer plastic bottles of trash per week if every student refills it twice, the science teacher said. "We've stopped 600 or more from getting into our landfills or oceans," Tolmich said.

"My true hope is that this takes off and we can virtually eliminate the use of plastic water bottles at Parkview," Tolmich recently wrote in an email to Parkview faculty.  "I know it is only 300 water bottles, but it is a start."

The campaign's motto for Parkview Panthers is "What's your carbon paw print?" Students Maren Moss and Terra Freking produced the campaign video that's attached to this article.

Last year, Tomich and students carried out a taste test of five types of bottled water, with one being plain tap water. "The results were virtually identical as far as preference," Tolmich said. "A lot of kids don't think that, they think they can tell a difference." But tap water is clean, good and cold he said. And by using tap water in refillable bottles, Tolmich points out, the students can save a lot of money.

The seed has already sprouted a seedling: A Parkview student this week told Tolmich that she had spent $400 - her entire paycheck - on reusable water bottles to distribute.

"If you have enough passion and are contagious enough," Tolmich said, "you can make your own changes." One water bottle at a time.