The water bottle filling stations manufactured by Elkay are part of an effort to increase sustainability by reducing plastic waste from disposable water bottles. The stations have a display to show how many disposable water bottles users have avoided using through filling their own bottles. The goal of these installations is to guide the University toward becoming carbon neutral by 2024.
“Before, students mainly saw these in their freshman dorms on East Campus, but they didn’t have the same opportunity when they went to classes or when they moved to West,” said junior Tristan Ballard, Duke Student Government senator for services who led the project. “Now, all these fountains are available on West Campus and at many of the most popular locations, and not only the students but professors, staff, they can use them too.”
Ballard said that among the most important new installation locations would be the Social Science and Social Psychology buildings.
“There’s also one in [the Divinity School], that one will be pretty popular,” Ballard said. “They’re also going to put them in Hudson Hall and Teer, which are engineering buildings.”
According to a project summary sent out by Ballard, some other new bottle-filling locations include Allen, LSRC, Bio-Sci, West Duke, Friedl, Languages, Marketplace, Law School, Biddle, East Duke and Old Chem.
Ballard said he collaborated with administrators interested in placing more of these units by providing student perspectives on the optimal campus locations. Duke Facilities Management was able to finalize the locations and confirm the new installations over winter. Ballard was unsure about the actual costs of installation, but estimated that it would range between 400 to 500 dollars per unit.
“From what I’ve seen, and I’ve looked up how to install these things, they usually take less than two hours to install” Ballard said. “They’re very quick, and they snap onto the existing fountains more or less.”
Lavanya Sunder, DSG vice president of services, said that Tristan has been very active in pursuing the project.
“I think it's a great accomplishment, because those water bottle filling stations are proven to decrease plastic waste, and I'm really proud of Tristan and our Services Committee,” wrote Sunder in an email Tuesday.
Ballard said that Facilities are hoping to finish installation of all the units by the end of February.
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