The irony in the fact that a bottled water ban at the University of Vermont actually increased plastic waste at the campus would be funny if it wasn’t so gratingly annoying.

Environmentalists, in their never-ending quest to tell people how to live their lives, often inadvertently make things worse in more ways than one.

The College Fix reports on a perfect case in point:

After bottled water was banned at the University of Vermont, students elected to drink more sugary bottled beverages, and did so at a higher rate. Not only did the ban fail to reduce plastic waste, it also failed to help students’ waistlines.
This according to a new study, “The Unintended Consequences of Changes in Beverage Options and the Removal of Bottled Water on a University Campus,” published in the July issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
“The bottled water ban did not reduce the number of bottles entering the waste stream from the university campus, the ultimate goal of the ban,” researchers concluded. “With the removal of bottled water, consumers increased their consumption of less healthy bottled beverages.”
In fact, the data found an 8 percent increase in bottles shipped to the campus between Spring of 2012 and Spring of 2013, and a 25 percent increase in bottles of sugary drinks shipped to campus, according to University of Vermont officials. This despite the fact that the university offered free reusable bottles at campus functions, and retrofitted water fountains with spouts specifically for filling these water bottles.

So have campus officials learned anything from this mess? Not enough to lift the bottled water ban.