Duke saves up to 400,000 plastic bottles with water filling stations

The Office of Sustainability is in the process of weighing feedback from students and employees to place more water filling stations around campus.

The office began installing the stations—which make it easier to refill a reusable water bottle—in 2009 in an effort to reduce plastic water bottle use on campus. Last year, students, faculty, staff and others used water-filling stations to fill up 400,000 disposable plastic bottles worth of water that might otherwise have been consumed from disposable bottles.

The Office of Sustainability became involved with the water bottle filling station project in response to student and faculty interest, said Casey Roe, sustainability outreach coordinator for the University.

“[We] see the hydration stations as a tool for students to use their [reusable] bottles throughout the day and avoid buying plastic water bottles,” she said.

Roe explained that there are several considerations that the Office of Sustainability and the Facilities Management Department must look at before deciding where they will install new fountains. Existing water fountain equipment has to be evaluated to determine whether it is possible to retrofit the water fountain, she explained. The sustainability office considers whether other filling stations are already available nearby and whether the area is highly trafficked enough to justify the spending as compared to other energy and water saving projects on campus. Funding for stations comes from the sustainability office’s Green Grant Fund and from Facilities Management.

Roe said the Office of Sustainability monitors student and employee feedback about suggestions for locations for new water bottle filling stations. She noted that students have been vocal about the topic on the Fix My Campus Facebook group.

“Fix My Campus has received a lot of interest from students about adding water bottle filling stations around campus and is currently working with the administration to figure out the best way to make this happen,” said Luke Wolf, a senior and co-director of Fix My Campus. “These stations are both really convenient for students and help make Duke more sustainable.”

Take Back the Tap, a student group that advocates for the installation of filling stations, has initiated a a campaign to make tap water more readily available on campus and change students’ perceptions about drinking water with the ultimate goal of to eliminating bottled water sales on campus. In recent years, peer universities, such as Harvard University and Princeton University , have banned the sale of plastic water bottles on campus.

Roe explained that the Office of Sustainability works with Duke’s Facilities Management Department to evaluate the student and employee requests for stations. She said that the initial goal was to have a filling station in most academic buildings, which the University is working towards achieving.

“We have a few new locations for water bottle filling stations under consideration at the moment,” Roe noted.