POMONA-- A student organization at Stockton is taking the school’s “green” reputation a step further with a reusable water bottle campaign.

Here at Richard Stockton College, student organizations run numerous campaigns on environmental education. But the Energy Service CORPS is looking to take Stockton’s environmentally conscious image one-step further. "I know Stockton has a lot of clubs noticed that plastic water bottles are being used way too much, so it's been an idea for a while, we just kinda started getting it in motion," said Zac Carson, coordinator of the Reusable Water Bottle Campaign.

So the group sold reusable stainless steel bottles for just a dollar and a survey, so the energy corps can gauge Stockton’s perceptions on how much money they can save. "We're just doing this as a benefit to community at Stockton, they cost us like $5 bucks so not the cheapest thing. You're already going to spend a dollar on a plastic bottle why not buy one of these and you can use it again and again," said Alex Wenholz, campus coordinator of Energy Service CORPS.

Studies show the average American spends about $400 dollars a year on plastic water bottles, and the group figures for each bottle they sell, they are keeping 200 plastic bottles out of landfills and oceans. "If you can save $400 dollars a year, think of all you can do with that money...also benefiting the environment in the long run too."

The group has 250 reusable stainless steel bottles to sell, but this is just the beginning. Their goal is to have a campus wide bottle ban in the future. "That way we could stop plastics that we have on campus right now and a lot of schools do this across the country...in the west its really common, in Oregon...that can save a college up to 35 thousand dollars a year."

So after all is said and done, they will compile and analyze the data collected from their short survey and present it to school administrators and at the very least keep the reusable water bottle campaign growing. "We're just trying to get support right now and in the spring we're going to go full throttle with this campaign to get bottle ban on campus…and there's nothing that can stop us."