New Water Bottle Filling Station at Wall High School

By Catherine Prasad

   On the first day of school, the students of Wall High School were greeted by a new installment to previously-average water fountains: a water bottle-refilling station.
   Wall High School’s Environmental Club contributed to the funding and purchase of the water bottle-refilling station, commemorated by a plaque above the eco-friendly device. The station was installed over the summer for the new school year. It is a part of the school’s progress in becoming more environmentally-friendly and producing less waste.
   “We literally spent some days after school picking through the trash can to see how much of the stuff in there actually should have been recycling,” said Mr. Joshua Tennant, the advisor of the Environmental Club.        
    The officers of the club noticed that most of the waste in the garbage was plastic water bottles and wanted a solution to the problem of excess waste. They saw other schools had water bottle-refillers and looked into the idea. The purchase was significant, approximately $1,000, so the officers decided to start a donation page on Kickstarter.com for people to give money to the cause.
    “We pushed it out to the whole school and said: here’s what we want to do, we want to reduce our waste, we want to give students clean-filtered clean water to stay hydrated,” Mr. Tennant explained. “Club members, parents, relatives from even out of state all helped contribute and some companies even donated.”
    The water bottle-refilling station has a digital counter that tracks how many disposable plastic bottles it has prevented. As of Nov. 29, over 19,000 water bottles have been saved.
    The water bottle-refilling station is only the first step in turning Wall High School green. There are future plans for more stations throughout the building as well as other methods to recycle and conserve energy.
    “We are currently working on Eco-Schools, which is an energy audit,” said David Roberts, a senior officer of the Environmental Club. “It works with conserving energy in schools.”
    The club plans on installing LED lights as a more environmentally-friendly replacement for the current lights used throughout the building. Also, they have looked into implementing automatic lights in certain parts of the school that turn on when they sense movement and off when no one is in the room. They will save the school a sufficient amount of energy, as many lights are left on in rooms that people are not in.
    There are also plans in the works for promoting the abandonment of plastic water bottles altogether. The Environmental Club wants to limit the amount of plastic bottles used by the student body as much as possible and it is doing all it can to achieve the goal.
    “I am currently designing water bottles to use as a fundraiser for the club and as a fundraiser for a possible additional refilling station,” said senior Grace Gamborany, an officer of the club, disclosed about the alternative to purchasing plastic bottles. The reusable bottles will be customized with the Wall ‘W’ and be available to the entire school.