Beth Wallace is the Manager of Sustainability for the Detroit Zoological Society.

Did you know that U.S. consumers go through 1,500 bottles of water every second? Of those 1,500 bottles, only 300 of them will be recycled. Unnecessary plastic pollution is a big reason why the Detroit Zoological Society is taking the bold step of phasing out the sale of bottled water – but it’s not the only reason.

When diving into this issue, we’ve also learned that most brand-named bottled water comes directly from the tap, our Great Lakes or even the Detroit River – costing consumers around 10,000 times the cost of tap water and diverting massive amounts of fresh water from the Great Lakes basin. In addition, there are an incredible amount of resources that go into producing one bottle of water and that single-use product remains in our environment anywhere from 500 to 1000 years.

As of September 2015, the Detroit Zoo will no longer sell bottled water. We ask that you join us to #ditchthebottle here at the Zoo and in your everyday lives. We encourage you bring reusable containers that can be refilled – for free – at any of our 20 refill stations during your visits to the Zoo. To help with this transition, we’re also offering a reusable sports drink container at all our major concessions, which costs less than bottled water.

Help us spread this message! We’ll be giving away two of our premium stainless steel reusable water bottles to our supporters. To win this reusable drink container, please connect with the Detroit Zoo on social media and share a photo of a place you would like to keep clean from plastic pollution. Tag the photo with #ditchthebottle and @detroitzoo on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. The Zoo’s Green Team will pick two winners on July 14.

– Beth Wallace