The Student Council at Ray High School has been working to reduce their carbon footprint, and for the past three years, they’ve been working on specific project.
After a few underclassmen noticed how much trash and plastic is used daily, they looked for a way to reduce the intake. A few classmates noticed that Veterans Memorial H.S. and King H.S. had new water fountains that were specifically for filling up water bottles. Each of these fountains show the number of water bottles filled, which in total shows how many plastic bottles are saved everyday.
With some help from the National Honor Society and Spanish Honor Society at Ray H.S., the group new they had the support to begin fundraising. After three years, all three groups were able to raise enough funds for 5 water bottle fill-up stations throughout the school.
It’s a simple concept, the water bottle fill-up station takes the filtered water from the fountain and, when the sensor is activated by a water bottle, the water flows out.
Senior and RHS Student Council member Evan Mintz says, “I think it’s really important for everyone to have them because as we said in 3 months we’ve saved 12,000 bottles. In a year that could be 100-thousands of bottles. If every school were to do that, it would be millions and millions of bottles.”
After the fountains were installed, the student body has been thrilled. “Everybody loves it, we’ll be walking down the hall and we’ll see a line of people waiting to fill them up,” says RHS Student Council Vice President and Senior, Kirby Gasiorowski.
In the three months that Ray has had these water bottle fill-up stations installed, they’ve totaled about 12,000 plastic bottles saved. One fountain counts ever bottle as 16 oz, and one station alone has filled up to 60,000 water bottles.
“It makes me happy to see that we’re just, little seniors, that were able to make a footprint in our school and our community,” says RHS Student Council member, Marina Stevens.
