by Chantal Raguin In the last month of 2016, Anna and I took time to reflect on Get On Tap’s progress. What have we accomplished? Where will we turn our focus next? Major events of the past months included: research on bottled water purchases at the high school, communications with Director of Food Services Kirsten Nelson, and a meeting with Superintendent Dr. Brand. Each of these brought us another step closer to answering our essential question: How can we create lasting, effective change in the way our district consumes water? The research in bottled water purchases proved that promotion of green habits must be strategically planned in order to be effective. We found that out of 120 randomly surveyed ABRHS students, 114 owned a reusable water bottle, meaning about 95% of the school has access to reusable water bottles. Therefore, students are not relying on bottled water because they do not own an alternative, but for other reasons. To change this habit, providing students with reusable water bottles likely won’t be an effective strategy as most already own them. We must instead focus on actually getting students to use the bottles they already have. Our research also provided data on water bottle purchasing demographics, giving us a target audience to cater to in promoting tap water. Graphs displaying this information are shown below. Communication with Director of Food Services Kirsten Nelson also gave us data crucial to answering our essential question. Ms. Nelson shared information on district profit from bottled water sales, which totals to be about $28,000. This was a clear indicator that the Food Service department would likely resist movement to ban bottled water sales, as they rely on them to stay within budget. A bit discouraged by this finding, Anna and I began to brainstorm ways to improve sustainability without enforcing a bylaw. Yet a few weeks later, we met with Superintendent Dr. Brand who was extremely on board with our goals and praised the idea of a bylaw. He was not terribly concerned with the Food Service budget, as he anticipated ways the missing sum could be made up. These ideas were still in development, but the bottom of line of the meeting marked Dr. Brand as a strong supporter of Get On Tap. Also at the meeting were Director of Facilites JD Head and District Energy Manager Kate Crosby, both whom contributed fantastic ideas and strongly advocated for our efforts. At the time of this reflection, Anna and I had recently set up an interview with Jill Appel, leader of our neighboring town, Concords, movement against bottled water. With this meeting we anticipated great advice on legal environmental action, as we realized so far we have not focused on the actual writing and passing of the bylaw. An update on the meeting will be soon, as it was completed last week. Stay tuned for a release of our plans for the next few months…
0 Comments
|
ArchivesCategories |