I am excited. So excited.

Oakland Community College campuses will be the first in Michigan to offer entirely biodegradable water bottles in their vending machines.

Thanks to a partnership with Chicago-based Green Planet Beverage Co., the school will be selling the “vapor distilled municipal water” for $1.50 a bottle.

Here’s the good stuff: Founder and CEO Bradford Schulman said, “It’s a 100 percent plant-based bottle. The bottle itself is reusable, it’s completely recyclable and if it does make it to a landfill, it will compost within 80 days.” He added that the ink used on the bottles is soy-based.

I’m so proud that schools in my area are launching this for the state (and proud of OCC for being that school). These are the kinds of companies we need to get behind.

Today, as we discussed this story at the newspaper where I work that had this story, one of my co-workers snidely commented that “regular” water only costs $1. I told him we should really be toting our own reusable water bottles around and saving the waste all together. But when that’s not an option, I’d gladly pay the 50 cents more for this biodegradable bottle.

My guess is that the penny pinchers who will balk at the idea of spending an additional 50 cents on these water bottles instead of the plastic ones just don’t get it — yet. Plastic 101: It doesn’t ever go away. It is just piling up around us and it uses up resources the world can’t afford to waste like petroleum.

In The Oakland Press story, Schulman remarked that his company is “set up to fail” against the big guys. How can we let companies like this fail?! And do we have any valid reason to do so? I just saw that someone left a nasty comment on the OP story about being proud of his “gas guzzler” and that he “doesn’t buy the ‘go green’ BS.” What is not to “get”? And even if you don’t “get” it, why hate? Is there really any reason at all to say that biodegradable is bad?

Anyway, maybe that was a bit of a tangent. Thanks for bearing with me through it.

I hope you’ll support Green Planet Beverage Co. and check it out on the company’s Facebook page.

Hopefully, we can spread the word to get these bottles in more vending machines and OCC will start a trend here in Michigan.

Please check out the full story about the bottles coming to OCC and see a video of Schulman discussing it here.