Refill and reuse

Win-win for you and the environment

The struggle of awkwardly filling up your water bottle at a fountain and the countless wasted plastic bottles are coming to an end. 

With plans for the installation of eight new water bottle refill stations, the Bulldog Sustainability Committee has been working to increase the fresh water available to students and to decrease the plastic waste that Ferris contributes to. 

The new stations will be installed on water fountains in the Timme Center, IRC, Sports Complex, Granger Center, Science Building, Starr, West Commons and the Grounds Annex, the committee’s vice president Jerry Scoby said. 

“We know that these efforts will result in less trash going to landfills,” Scoby said. “I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to intentionally look at the front of these bottle refill stations and look at the number of uses. I did this recently in just one building and the digital readings showed over 53,000 uses. Imagine the size of the pile of disposable water bottles that did not go in a landfill as a result of these uses.” 

Many students are in favor of installing more stations and want there to be even more around campus. 

“I wish they had them on every floor in the dorms,” Ferris pre-pharmacy junior Luke Jacobson said. “I used to live on Ward third floor and it was really inconvenient to go down to the first floor for water.” 

About 50 billion plastic water bottles were used by Americans last year and with only 23 percent of them being recycled, 38.5 billion water bottles were wasted according to Ban the Bottle, an organization that campaigns against the use of disposable water bottles. 

“This is motivated by doing our part to help take care of the environment,” Scoby said. “I have done research on how long it takes for a plastic water bottle to biodegrade and I have seen anywhere from 400 to 600 years.” 

The eight new stations will be installed over the course of the 2017-18 school year and more will be installed as new buildings are built and major renovations are made.