The number of bottles per capita shipped to the university campus did not change significantly between spring 2012 (baseline) and fall 2012, when the minimum healthy beverage requirement was put in place. However, between fall 2012 and spring 2013, when bottled water was banned, the per capita number of bottles shipped to campus increased significantly. Thus, the bottled water ban did not reduce the number of bottles entering the waste stream from the university campus, which was the ultimate goal of the ban. Furthermore, with the removal of bottled water, people in the university community increased their consumption of other, less healthy bottled beverages.
Leftists seem to have a fundamental difficulty thinking in economically rational terms. They instead tend to think in lawyer terms: bans, regulations, restrictions on the theory "if we pass it they will obey". This isn't true and is getting less true every day as the sheer volume of coercive regulation and law explodes in the name of 'compassion?', 'greenery?', 'equality?' or God knows what.
Coercion is a bad thing and should be the last option for civilized people. For our left elites it is often the first option (although on certain social issues the religious right does the same things). The arrogance of of our greedy clerisies, both left and right has no limit.
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