Water Bottle Filling Station
Student Project Proposal
Project Summary
The Boston Latin School student body needs to be further encouraged to make
environmentally friendly choices, as climate change becomes an ever more urgent issue.
They need to reduce their usage of disposable water bottles, which are detrimental in
myriad ways. Because sustainability has recently been made a goal by the administration
and because BLS is a city, state, national, and global leader, greater enthusiasm for the
green movement among the student body should be fostered. BLS Youth CAN wishes to
purchase and install three Elkay brand EZH2O™ System Cooler/Bottle Filling Stations,
which, in addition to functioning as normal fountains, possess a spot for hands-free water
bottle filling and keep track of how many disposable water bottles were saved from
consumption through refilling bottles. The installation of these fountains would coincide
with a reusable water bottle giveaway for the BLS student body. Youth CAN will document
and publicize all phases of the project to recognize the student body’s accomplishments
and provide a guide for other schools. Our goals are 1. To reduce how frequently people use
disposable water bottles and increase how frequently they use reusable water bottles and
2. To generate enthusiasm among the student body for school-wide sustainability. We are
requesting $2500 to cover most of the costs for the three bottle filling stations and their
installation. We will conduct parallel surveys before and after our project to measure
students’ usage of disposable and reusable water bottles and of school fountains. After our
project we will gather anecdotal evidence on the effect of the project on student
enthusiasm for school-wide sustainability.
Statement of Need
The amount of petroleum it takes to produce and transport a disposable bottle of
water would fill a water bottle ¼ of the way. It requires the equivalent of three bottles of
water to create one disposable bottle of water. Only 1 in 5 disposable plastic bottles is
recycled; the remainder end up in landfills and as pollutants in ecosystems worldwide, and
plastic bottles take hundreds of years to biodegrade. What’s more, bottled water does not
have to meet government quality standards for tap water. Despite all of these marks
against them, disposable water bottles are wildly popular across the nation and at Boston
Latin School. Those students who don’t bring a water bottle to school may simply drink
from the fountain, therefore sending huge quantities of water down the drain every day.
The Boston Latin School student body needs to be further encouraged to make
choices to benefit the environment and needs to be educated on the finite nature of the
earth’s resources, especially potable drinking water. They need to reduce their usage of
disposable water bottles in order to reduce the school’s environmental impact. The whole
student body must get excited about the green movement and not just see being green as
another task but as something that can visibly benefit them. These changes must occur at
Boston Latin School specifically as Dr. Mooney Teta has made sustainability a school-wide
initiative and as Boston Latin School serves as a model for schools across the city, the
nation, and the globe.
Program Description
Elkay is a company that produces sinks,
faucets, water coolers, drinking fountains, and, most
notably, EZH20 bottle filling stations, which are
hands-free, can fill an 18 ounce bottle in less than 6
seconds, and track how many disposable water bottles
have been saved by refilling bottles. We, BLS Youth
CAN, first became acquainted with Elkay when we
were presenting at the Massachusetts Sustainable
Communities Conference, and Elkay was there as a vendor. We spoke with them and
invited them to our 2012 annual Climate Change Summit at MIT; they came. Our
relationship grew when they came to our Green Apple Day of Service in September, and we
later had two meetings with representatives from the company. We decided that we
wanted to get three water bottle filling stations for Boston Latin School, and we researched
Elkay’s competitor Globaltap before choosing Elkay, whose models were more appealing
and less expensive. We conducted blind taste tests of bottled water and tap water, and 50%
thought tap water was the bottled water. During a meeting with Elkay, Elkay worked with a
team of our students to choose locations for the new bottle filling stations. We secured
Headmaster Mooney Teta’s permission for the filling stations, and we discussed the desire
to install the new stations with Phoebe Beierle, the Sustainability Coordinator for Boston
Public Schools (BPS), whose office is located in the BPS Facilities Department. We just sent
the specifications for the filling stations to Dennis Sheridan, also from BPS Facilities, who
came to BLS for a site visit. We conducted a survey of 140 students who are bottled waterdrinkers from grades 9 through 12 (full report in appendix) and found that only 63% of
bottled water-drinkers are willing to use the current school water fountains but that 94%
would be willing to use the bottle filling stations.
We are continuing the process of getting permission from the Facilities Department;
a crucial part of this process is communicating to them that they will not have to pay
anything. We will soon conduct a survey of the student body on their use of and satisfaction
with the current water fountains. BLS recently received, separate from our efforts, a
donation of a filling station from Globaltap. It is a different kind of unit from those we wish
to install, and its installation is not part of our agenda. We will purchase two filling stations
from Elkay, and they will give us a third one for free. Concomitant with our purchasing the
stations we will begin our water bottle giveaway (a separate Youth CAN project), in which
students caught doing random acts of green will be given reusable water bottles by the
administration, to increase use of the filling stations and to generate excitement among the
student body. During the giveaway period, the stations will be installed. We will continue to
educate the student body about water as a resource, one of Youth CAN’s focuses for the
year. We will conduct a survey towards the end of the year that corresponds to the first
survey and analyze the results. We will publicize successful results with the school
community to recognize the achievements of the student body. We will publish an outline
of our entire project for other schools to use as a guide.
Not only do the bottle filling stations serve as an excellent tool for education for
sustainability, but they also, in conjunction with the bottle giveaway, can create positive
energy around sustainability as a school goal. The filling stations have already seen great
success on many college campuses, and we are seeking to bring them into high school
arena.
High schools in wealthier districts, such as Manchester-Essex, Acton-Boxborough,
and Hingham, have already completed environmental projects that appealed to and excited
their student bodies, and they did not have to fundraise, because they received funding
from their administrations and their communities. We want to similarly engage students at
BLS, which is why we are working so hard to gather funds and to get bargains anywhere we
can.
Goals
1. Reduce how frequently people use disposable water bottles and increase how frequently
they use reusable water bottles
2. Generate enthusiasm among the student body for school-wide sustainability
Implementation Timeline
X
Contact Elkay
Invite Elkay to display
Elkay fountains at
Youth CAN events
Draft and conduct water
fountain surveys
Elkay does BLS site visit
of existing fountains
Get permission from
Headmaster, Custodians,
BPS Facilities Dept., etc.
Elkay visits to help
choose appropriate filling
station model
Get filling station
specifications from Elkay
Purchase Stations
October
November
December
January
February
April
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Install stations
X
X
Conduct water bottle
giveaway
Conduct and analyze exit
survey, publish project
outline as guide for other
schools
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Budget
1. Elkay® EZH2O Cooler Kits (Model # LZSTL8WSLK) to Replace Old BLS
Fountains
(2 cooler kits x $1,206/cooler kit + 1 cooler kit free = $2,412)
2. Installation of Cooler Kits
(3 units to install x 2 hours/installation x $150/hour*=$900)
Total
*Installation figure from Dennis Sheridan, from the Boston Public Schools Facilities
Department.
$2,412
$900
$3,312
Evaluation
We will administer a survey before and after the installation of the filling stations and
the commencement of the bottle giveaway. This survey will collect data on how frequently
the students use disposable water bottles, how frequently they use reusable water bottles,
and how frequently they use the school water fountains. It will survey two randomly
selected homerooms from each grade to provide a sample group representative of the
school community.
We will contact the company responsible for the water bottle vending machines at BLS
to find out how many water bottles are bought monthly both before and after our initiative.
“How many water bottles did you purchase from the BLS vending machines in the past
month?” will also be a survey question, so that we can compare our data with that of the
vending machine company and have a back-up plan if the company will not give us the
data.
Using the tickers on the filling stations, we will find out how often the bottle feature of
the filling stations is used each month.
Finally, we will interview people after the entire initiative has been put in place to
gather anecdotal evidence on how our initiative has affected student sentiment towards
school-wide sustainability.
Appendix
1. Elkay Brochure (Note the BLS corridor pictured in the upper left corner.) (Attached)
2. Filling Station Specifications (Attached)
3. Filling Station Poll Report (Attached)
4. See http://www.blsyouthcan.org/BLS_Youth_C.A.N./Water.html