Plastic Bottle Discussion
During our discussion on Friday, many of you raised great points about the use of plastic water bottles at school. For this weeks discussion board post please answer the following question (5-7sentences) and reply to one other classmate (3-5 sentences).
What is one way you think that we can reduce the amount of plastic bottles we use at school?
-Be sure to include
a. What is your idea?
b. How would your idea work?
c. What are some problems with making your idea work at school?
d. What is one way we could solve the problem you mentioned in part c.
35 Replies
One way of reducing the amount of plastic bottle use can be students bringing a thermos from their homes and having them to be refilled in the cafeteria. We could work in this idea by encouraging the students with presentations about the devastating effects of plastic bottles. We can also work on it by not selling water bottles in the cafeteria and in this way, students get adapted to bring their thermos. Some problems to make my idea work at school is that many students in campus are ignorant in the aspect of recycling and I think that it is pretty evident when the trash is separated in Earth Week. Also, it would be somewhat difficult to have enough water in both cafeterias to sustain so many kids in school. One way we could solve the issue of ignorance is that we present to students with presentations, projects and diverse activities about the awareness we should have in the environment and how can water bottles affect the environment, without panicking or causing other reaction related.
One way to reduce plastic in the ASFG is to stop selling and making a profit out of them and instad make a refill spot that still charges you but less and it's actually better water than water bottles. My idea is that in both cafeterias instead of selling water bottles they sell the option to refill your reusable bottles. One of the main problems I think is money income because the school wouldn't make the money they made selling plastic bottles. I think selling the water by the same price is not fair because when they are selling water bottles they charge you the price of the plastic and water instead of this approach which it would be just water. Anyhow, I think the school makes a lot of money and the water bottles would affect the minimum amount. So I think this will dramatically reduce the income of water bottles in ASFG.
I think this is true and I liked how you pointed out the ignorance of recycling water bottles among the students is affecting this problem. Because in Mexico, tap water is not trustable we buy a lot of water bottles to keep ourselves hydrated. I think if we educate students about the issues and the aftermath that this brings, we could totally change this problem in Mexico.
I firmly agree with you, I believe that a refilling fountain would help decrease the number of water bottles sold, making a huge impact in the environment. You are also right about the money, the income of money would defiantly decrease, but we can substitute it by having more options for food and drinks. I think that the price of the refilling fountain cannot be lowered because of the maintenance of it, but it could still be done and it would be very efficient for the whole community. I think your ideas are very good and concrete.
One way I think that we can reduce the amount of plastic bottles in school is making sure that everyone brings thermos to school, so they don´t buy plastic bottles and contaminate more. An a idea that would work is that they put machines of water and other drinking. For example, instead of buy a bottle of nestea that cost an amount of money, a machine will sell nestea and refill your bottle with a less amount of money, so you would spend less money. I think that the machines will cost a lot of money to have them in school and have many around all the school, but maybe the school could have three around all the school and see if it works and if it doesn’t work they take out the machines, but if it does work they start putting more each time, and make people bring there thermo. Other reason that it would be difficult to do it is that when you refill it the bottles are not the same size and it would not be fare that a person pay for a bottle of 500 ml the same than the ones that refills its bottle of 350 ml, a solution is that the school sells thermos of the same size for a fare amount of money and all the people that want to refill its thermos pay the same price.
First we need to inform all the school about the problem because not everybody knows. Second we should put hydratation systems or like soda machines like in the fast food restaurants but with other beverages. This idea can work if everybody gets to know the problem. The cafeterias could put the soda machines and you could go with your thermos and they would fill it out with something like powerade or nestea.The difficulty would be that not everybody would bring a thermo. But the cafeterias can sell thermos or they can have glasses like in the elementary cafeteria were you can drink your beverage.
I agree with Luciana when she says that stop selling plastic bottles to make them bring a reusable bottle, and I also agree that the school makes a lot of money, but I think that they should pay a less amount of money, not free because the water cost, but less money. When you use the bottle too many times and if the bottle is of plastic, and you let it in the sun it can give off some chemical to what you drink and it is not good to are heathy.
I agree with you that we need to reduce the water bottles by stopping to sell them. And there should be hydratation systems in the cafeterias. And I also agree with you that the water they give us there should cost less.
One way of reducing and try of stoping the use of water bottles at ASFG is by putting better water fountains, and not only 3 all around the school, even more so that children instead of buying water bottles at the cafeteria they drink by the water fountains. Another idea is that like Paco said, children and teachers can bring their own therms to school and with the GARRAFON fill it every time is empty, and by doing that we can reduce the buying of water bottles at the cafeterias and then after people get used to, take away the selling of water bottles at school.
I agree with you Ale' the idea of putting machins with different flavor drinks. And it is better because you save more money and it is way better for the environment. And i think the same, maybe the flavor machins drinks will cost a big amount of money, but people will know that they need to keep our world save, and they will do their best by bringing their thermos to school, and just refill it when they need more. Let's start making that job if we really want to help our environment
Paco,
I think your idea of making a presentation to the students is a good one. We should talk more about this.
Mr. C
Luciana,
I think that you have a great idea with the re-fillable water station. This is something we should discuss more to see how we could make this feasible at ASFG. I think it is possible.
Mr. C
Ale,
I really like your idea of having a water bottle that the school sells at a fair price that is a set amount of water (350ml or 500ml) that way there can be one fair price for refills.
Mr. C
Anna,
I agree that more water bottles around school would help solve this problem.
Mr. C
My idea is that the school stops selling any bottled water and any bottled soft drinks and just provides water fountains or "garrafones" to refill. By this students are forced to bring a thermos from home. I think this would reduce the school's plastic garbage in large quantities. One of the problems I see with this idea is that ASFG might not be able to afford water facilities with filtered water. A solution to this problem could be that students still have to pay for the filtered water from the water facilities but much less than for water that is bottled.
I think your idea of having machines with other soft drink besides water is a great idea. This allows students to not only fill their thermos with plain water but also with other sugar-filled drinks.
I think that a good idea would be to have hydration stations, because the at school we have fountains but some of us don't trust that its clean water. Some of the problems of making this idea work would be first of all that maybe kids would keep buying water bottles. Maybe some kids might get tired of just drinking water so they would still buy plastic bottles for different flavors. We could solve this problems by first making the hydration stations the only source of water at school, by stop selling water bottles at the cafeterias. Then we could also put different flavors on each hydration station, or to have the choice to change the flavor by pressing a button on the hydration station. 
I agree with this idea because some students might want to drink different beverages. And to sell thermos or glasses for whoever wants to drink from the hydration station is also a good idea. I also agree that we should inform students about recycling or the problem of doing it
I agree with you luciana its better for all. We reduce the use of plastic bottles. The cafeteria keeps recieving money and we also get water but as you also said the prize should be less because it wouldn't be fair that we pay the same prize as the bottled water.
I think a way to reduce the use of bottled water would be that we could do posters and paste them around the school, presentations in flag assembly or announcements in the bulletin. Thing that everybody can see. Some problems may be that we would need to use paper and we would be using too much.We could use recycled paper and take it to laminate so that we can use it many times for a period of long time
I think we can reduce the amount of plastic bottles in the school by stop selling the plastic bottles to forced people to bring their own bottles and fill them with water every time they want to, instead of buying and buying plastic bottles every time. This idea could work because people will start to bring their own water bottles and they could be able to fill them for a samll amount of money every time they want. Some problems could be that people do not always buy water but they also buy nestea and powerade so it could be difficult to have water machines, nestea, and powerade machines because it would be really expensive to refill the machines everytime, but one way we could solve this problem is by making it a little bit more expensive when you want to refill your bottle.
I agree with Ale that we should have different flavor machines but that they will be really exoensive for the school but it would help to reduce the plastic bottles.
I think we could reduce the use of plastic bottles in school by changing the way the liquids are sold and instead of selling plastic bottles, sell aluminum cans that contain the liquids to be sold, since aluminum is easier to recycle than plastic; water refilling stations with paper cups next to them could also help produce less plastic or aluminum waste. My idea could work because the use of plastic bottles in many places is excessive and plastic is a material that is not as easy to recycle; we can't stop people from buying the products they want or remind them to bring reusable thermos from home everyday but we can give them what they want but in an alternative presentation (the way they are packed) and giving them the resources to produce less waste. Some of the problems that could present are that paper cups could become another waste because of the use of paper and that some people don't place the trash in the right trashcans and aluminum might be more expensive for the school to buy than plastic. We could solve the paper waste problem by reminding people to bring their own containers from home and in case they don't, have the paper cups. Find a way or liquid that could be less expensive for the school to buy.
I agree with Paola because even if people know about the environmental issues some don't care and if we keep reminding them they might start to help and make a change. And this could be done with promotional posters and presentations.
I think that you are right we should inform the whole school about what is going on and should put more drinking fountains but also more reliable because no one trusts the ones that are right now.
I think that in the school they should put a rule that you have to bring a bottle (not a plastic water bottle) to refill it. This would work because people aren't going to use that much plastic "recycling" bottles but they will use theirs over and over. The problem is that they have to put more fountains that ensure that we have clean water. I think that we can solve the fountain problem by making the school put reliable drinking and refilling fountains.
I think that is a good idea but how do you get all the kids involved with bringing thermoses. I think that there should be a prize for kids after bringing a thermos a lot. It will get the kids to actually use them and little by little change the world.
To begin I think we we should alert all school to the problem. This way the teachers and students decide how to resolve the problem. Like the cafeterias should lower prices for water for kids who have thermoses and use them. Yeah the school loses some money but it is a small price to pay to save the worldPeople start to realize how much money there saving and also how much they are helping the environment.
This post was edited on: 2011-10-17 at 09:39 PM by: NicolasDe La Cruz
I think the school need to give away plastic bottles and if you don't bring that plastic bottle you can't drink water, only in the fountain. If you bring another plastic bottle that is ciel or etc you have to have it in your backpack. The problem would be that the student wont bring the school water bottles. The solution would be take points off.
Your idea is very good, but I don't think the presentations would work that good.
I think that one way of reducing plastic bottles at school is just by bringing your water in thermos, I would say place clean water fountains around the school so students don't buy plastic bottles, some problems that can occur is that many students don't like to drink from water fountains, and many people don't encourage recycling but i think that through good encouragment we can make people bring thermos or drink from water fountains.
I agree with rodrigo with having soda machines or something that can hydrate the people in our school without contaminating the world by wasting millions of plastic bottles
One way I think we can reduce the amount of plastic bottles in the school is that cafeterias stop selling plastic bottles.What I mean is that they should only give water to people that bring a "termo" and they could have a free refill. My idea would work because lets say that they put like the soda things that are in MC Donals but with nestea, powerade, and all the things that cafeterias sell in bottles. Lets say maybe you could have a card and you swip the card like if it was a credit card and it lets you fill your "termo" and then refill it. I think that one problem could be that. i dont think there would be a problem with this idea because this would truly decrease the plastic bottle use at school because now everybody would have their "termo" for and free refill.
I agree with Carlos because many people dont like drinking from the water fountains because the water dosent taste good. So maybe if they put clean and fresh water more people are going to drink from the water fountains and they are going to start buying less plastic bottles.
Ok, first of all there are many responsibilities to reduce this big amount of waste. 1. Students should be required to bring a container that is reusable to drink water and other stuff. 2. the school should put cameras or guards on the trash cans so that they can make sure people are recycling correctly and not doing it randomly and carelessly. 3. The cafeterias should stop selling bottles in plastic bottles, they should buy the products in bottles but then open them and fill a container with the different liquids and keep them cold and give them out in the students containers, after using the bottles they should return them for a refill to the company or recycle them. Plastic bottles are no the only problem in the world, we also need to save more energy and do something with the human beef eating problem, but for now this are great solutions for plastic bottle recycling at ASFG (I think). Mr. Cotter , I just got home from my Volleyball training and could post this until now! I also could not find where to post it and got confused, i finally replied to your example.
Paco Aguirre
Sep 27, 2011 at 9:41 PM