Hall Students Propose School 'Water-Filling Station'

If these motivated seniors have their way, use of disposable water bottles in their school will be significantly diminished by the time they graduate in June.

A group of students in the Global Problem Solving Class, taught by Liz Devine, presented their idea for a water "filling station" at Hall to the Board of Education Tuesday night.

Global Problem Solving, which is a new course at both Hall and Conard, is a social studies course that provides students with the opportunity to focus on a real world problem and develop workable solutions to impact it. The students work in collaborative teams to develop solutions and implement their projects.

This group of Hall students has chosen water, and they are working specifically to change the culture of using disposable water bottles at Hall by raising awareness of the issue and installing a water filling station in the history wing of the school. The station would provide students with an easy and efficient way to refill reusable water bottles.

"Our goal is not only to make refilling reusable water bottles easier, but to make the community more aware," said one of the student presenters. They explained that it takes three times as much water to make a disposable water bottle as it does to fill it.

Even though the disposable water bottles are recyclable, another student explained that it takes 18 of those bottles just to make one T-shirt.

Class members have been working to educate their peers at Hall, and recently conducted a in the cafeteria between bottled and tap water. The Global Problem Solving class members were not surprised that many students could not tell the difference, and many preferred the taste of the tap water.

The students reported that feedback received thus far has been favorable, and they have learned that a similar initiative at Glastonbury High School has been very successful.

The Global Problem Solving students are hoping that other Hall students will pledge to "take back the tap," and have the ultimate goal of teaching sustainable habits to the West Hartford community. In the second semester, they will focus on taking that message to the elementary and middle schools.

"Teach-ins will be the biggest part of it ... those who are moved by it are going to make changes," one of the students said.

The Hall students hope to encourage the use of refillable water bottles by the school's athletic teams.

The students assured the Board of Education that they were not looking for funding for the water filling station or any of their other projects, and planned to raise the $700 needed for the filling station themselves. They have already gotten PTO support as well as an offer from the Hall class of 1982 to fund a second filling station.

Principal Donald Slater, they said, is in favor of the project.