Weekly Blog

Impressions of the First Week, March 15, 2013

This has been our team’s first week working full time on the Think Outside the Bottle campaign.  We have comfortably settled into the Worcester Community Project Center and have finally begun putting our plans into action.  Our most exciting experience of the week was holding a Tap Water Challenge taste test in the Campus Center.  We had over 40 people take the challenge and 33 people signed our pledge to not drink disposable bottled water for the remainder of the academic year.  The amount of people wanting to participate in the challenge was so outstanding that we had to end the challenge early when we ran out of cups!

We are also excited about our Think Outside the Bottle Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/ThinkOutsideTheBottleAtWpi?fref=ts

Our page has recieved over 100 “likes” this week and is being shared throughout the country.  A poster that we created for our project has already been viewed by over 3,000 people on facebook and has been shared by the national Think Outside the Bottle campaign.  We have had a great start and can’t wait for the rest of the term!

Britney, Mark, Nick and Frank

 

Impressions of the Second Week, March 22, 2013

Our second week with the project is just ending and we are now even more passionate about tap water!  On Wednesday we attended the World Cafe program at the Goat’s Head restaurant to meet with students, faculty, and staff to discuss WPI’s Sustainability Plan.  We met many prominent sustainability leaders from campus and explained our project goals for WPI.  A lot of the individuals we spoke to were very excited and interested in our project.  We had a lot of fun at the event and were able to learn a lot about the other aspects of sustainability at WPI!

On Thursday, we visited the Water Treatment Plant in Holden to educate ourselves about how the tap water of Worcester and surrounding towns is treated and regulated.  The tour was very insightful and we were surprised at how much work actually goes into cleaning the municipal water supply!  We are going to head back to the Water Treatment Plant next week to test the quality of different water sources around the WPI campus and also different bottled water sources.  Week 3 here we come!

Britney, Mark, Nick, and Frank

 

Impressions of the Third Week, 4/1/13

This week has been exciting as the plans for our tap water benefit concert are finally falling into place.  We never could have imagined the work that goes into setting up a show on campus before this experience.  We have multiple bands that are willing to play, we have a venue in the Odeum, on campus, and we have our date set for April 14 but we still have to wait for funding and other processes.  Hopefully, this concert will be a great way to spread our campaign to the WPI campus!

Also, Thursday was an awesome day as we held another Tap Water Challenge at the Campus Center.  70 participants came up to our table during Thurday’s challenge, which was almost twice the amount of participants we normally have!  We are glad to see that our campaign is spreading throughout campus and hope that numbers keep increasing!

Britney, Mark, Nick, and Frank

 

Impressions of the Fourth Week, 4/4/13

This week was both exciting and stressful as we realized the number of steps involved in installing new bottle filling stations around campus.  On the bright side we received exciting news this week that the school intends to install a new water bottle filling station on campus! The new station will be located in the basement floor of Higgins Laboratories.  This is a great step towards better sustainability on the WPI campus!  To continue the installation of bottle filling stations our group will be writing a small report to present to the President’s Task Force on Sustainability to show them the demand for new bottle filling stations on campus as well.

Tomorrow our group will be attending a sustainability competition at Tufts University.  This will be another great chance to increase outreach of our campaign…(and there is cash prize up for grabs!)  We are excited to see the other issues being pursued at the competition as well and it should be a fun experience!

Britney, Mark, Nick, and Frank

 

Impressions of the Fifth Week, 4/12/13

This week we began analyzing all of the water fountains around the WPI campus. We checked each fountain for water temperature, pressure, and overall quality. We also added every water fountain to an app called “Tap Buddy” which let us show where each water fountain is located around campus and to comment on its quality.  As we checked each fountain we also placed facts about the negative impacts of disposable bottled water at each fountain.

We also competed in another sustainability competition at WPI on Wednesday. Although we did not win, we received a lot of support for our project at the event and it was great to see some other projects people are involved in on our campus!

For good news, we received funding for our concert this Sunday! The concert will include four different bands from the New England area and will have different sustainability groups, as well as us, speaking in between bands and campaigning along the side. The concert will be located in the Campus Center Odeum from 4-8 this Sunday at WPI and is FREE. This concert will be a great way for us to get our message out while having fun at the same time! Hopefully this concert will be a great success!

Britney, Mark, Nick, and Frank

Final Impressions, 4/25/13

This week has been a culmination of all the hard work we’ve been putting into our project. We presented our findings to the President’s Task Force on Sustainability, completed our paper, made our final presentation, and sent our final surveys out to everyone who had signed our pledge to not drink tap water for the remainder of the school year. Our group has learned so much from working with this project. It is sad that our project has come to an end but we will never stop spreading the knowledge of our campaign. I can honestly say that each one of us has become emotionally invested in the promotion of tap water on both the WPI campus and in society as well. We hope we have been able to educate the community as much as we have educated ourselves throughout our experience with this project. We would like to thank everyone who has helped us complete this project and turn it into such a great success and, as always, remember to Think Outside the Bottle!

Britney, Mark, Nick, and Frank