URI saves approximately 450,000 plastic water bottles in under a year. PHOTO CREDIT: Maddie Bataille | Photo Editor
The University of Rhode Island is doing its part to reduce plastic pollution through the installation of reusable water bottle filling stations.
According to Jeffrey Plouffe, URI’s associate director of Housing and Residential Life (HRL), the first reusable filling station was installed in Hillside Hall when the building was constructed in 2012.
“We believed that it was something that students would want and we thought we would try it,” Plouffe said. “It turned out to be a great success.”
Plouffe is responsible for overseeing all of the filling stations that have been installed in residential buildings on campus. According to him, in April 2022, he made it a primary goal of HRL to install at least one filling station in each of URI’s 25 undergraduate housing buildings. As of February 2023, the only residence halls that are still without the stations are Garrahy Hall, Wiley Hall and the University Gateway Apartment complexes.
The delay on the installation of stations in Garrahy and Wiley Hall is due to their age, according to Plouffe. However, HRL faces a different problem in the Gateway complexes, as they are attached to the town of Kingston’s water system rather than the University’s private well system.
“What I did find out is that retrofitting bottle filling stations is a much more difficult task than I thought it would be,” Plouffe said. “You take a building like Dorr — it’s entirely concrete, it was cast, a cast concrete building and that was the design in the 1960s. So where do you put [a sanitary line] in and domestic line to bring water into it, and then enough room in a wall for a filter and a refrigeration unit?”
According to Plouffe, the University wanted to have more reusable water bottle stations installed before this year, however, the project was completely delayed a year because of the Coronavirus pandemic. However, Plouffe said that after the surge of the pandemic, the University wanted to prioritize students getting water in a more sanitary way than through sinks or standard water fountains.
The installation of the reusable water bottle filling stations in residence halls, however, is disconnected from the process of installing them in academic buildings, according to Assistant Director of Maintenance and Repair, Daniel Cartier.
Cartier said that the first reusable water bottle filling station was installed in the Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences (CBLS) when it was built in 2008. After that, the second one was installed in Avedisian Hall for the College of Pharmacy when it was built in 2012.
While not every academic building on campus has a reusable filling station yet, Cartier said that he is working through each building and trying to replace at least a few older water fountains with filling stations per year.
“What we did was try to prioritize the buildings by student load,” Cartier said. “So we did the library first because they have the most student capacity. Then Swan, and we’ve done some in Washburn.”
The process of installment has been expedited, not only for the effect it has on the access to clean, cold water for students, according to Plouffe, but also because of the environmental effect it has on the University.
“Every machine has a meter reading with the number of bottles,” Plouffe said. “So right now, I think we’re approaching, just since April [2022], 450,000 bottles saved by using the bottle filling station and if all of them were in place for an entire year, we would say at that rate that we’re currently [saving] over two million bottles a year.”
According to the non-profit organization Food and Water Watch, “bottled water generally is no cleaner or safer or healthier than tap water. In fact, the federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing and monitoring of municipal drinking water.”
While the tap water on campus is safe for consumption, according to Plouffe, the reusable water bottle stations that have been installed have charcoal filters and refrigeration units for the best taste.
However, along with cleanliness and access, Cartier said that the installation of the newer station is needed as it makes maintenance easier if all the stations used the same parts.
“Instead of having multiple different kinds of water fountains like we have now when we replace an old unit, we put in the same basic model in all the new buildings so I don’t have to stock parts for 10 different kinds of water fountains,” Cartier said. “Now if one of them fails, it’s a pretty easy swap out to replace it, or I can steal parts from another older unit. So, our goal is to standardize parts.”
According to Cartier, though he does not officially have the data for the number of bottles saved by the filling stations in the academic buildings, he estimates that over 10 million bottles have been saved since 2008.
Additionally, Plouffe said in Hutchinson Hall, a smaller residence hall on campus with only 100 occupants, in comparison to a larger residence hall, such as Brookside Hall, which has an occupancy of 500 students, has saved 20,501 plastic water bottles since September alone, according to the meter on that station.
The money for these stations comes from the University’s fund 210, which means the cost is paid with the dollars residents pay to live on campus. According to Plouffe, each station’s installation including parts and labor costs approximately $100,000.
“$100,000 is a small price to pay for those two benefits, right?” Plouffe said. “Yeah, that’s not a small amount of money. But the benefit of keeping students healthy and providing them with water that would otherwise [be] obtained from plastic bottles — I think it’s just, it’s already paid for itself as far as I’m concerned.”
Unlike the self-funded filling stations in the residence halls, Cartier said that the University funds the installation of stations in academic buildings, which is why the process he is involved in takes a bit longer.
“As I get funding and materials available, they replace older [stations] with newer ones,” Cartier said. “But I have limited resources. They just can’t go do them all at once.”
In addition, Plouffe said that he is excited about expanding the filling stations to residence halls because of the collaboration shows going on between residents and HRL.
“Residents demonstrated this was something they wanted, and as a department, we responded to meet their needs,” Plouffe said. “I think that’s the part I think I’m most thrilled by.”
Plouffe encourages students and other community members at URI to utilize the stations as they are a way to not only stay hydrated and sanitary, but to do something productive for the environment by saving plastic.