Water and Community Health
Clean, available water is essential to both healthy ecosystems and healthy communities. On Martha’s Vineyard, we are fortunate to have excellent drinking water — but we must also protect it, and rethink how we use it. Around the Island, refill stations and tap access points are helping reduce single-use plastic waste while reminding us that safe, local water is a shared natural resource — not a packaged product.
The Problem with Bottled Water
Each year, Americans use over 50 million single-use water bottles — many of which are never recycled. Transporting and packaging water wastes energy, contributes to plastic pollution, and disconnects us from the clean local water that’s already available from our taps.On Martha’s Vineyard, bottled water often travels hundreds of miles before reaching store shelves, even as our Island’s own groundwater remains among the cleanest in Massachusetts.
The Solution: Take Back the Tap
The Vineyard Conservation Society’s Take Back the Tap campaign began as the next step after the successful plastic bag ban. The goal: make it easy, convenient, and rewarding to refill — not rebuy.Thanks to a generous anonymous donor, refill stations were first installed in every Island school and later expanded to beaches, libraries, town halls, and ferry terminals. With more than 20 refill stations now in operation, the network continues to grow.
A Shared Resource
Access to clean, local water is both a right and a responsibility. By carrying a reusable bottle and choosing to refill, we can all help keep plastic out of our landfills and waters, and reaffirm that clean water is a public good — not a commodity.
