Awareness campaign brings bottle filling station to Homestead

The school bubbler woes of students and faculty may soon be quenched as a water bottle filling station will be installed this week “in the 900 wing – right by the bathrooms,” Ms. Susan Godfrey, physical education and AVID 10 teacher, said.

As a result of an idea Homestead students conceived, enough money was raised to install one water fountain by one of the commons. To cut down on plastic bottle waste at Homestead, AVID came up with an idea that grew into a campaign for water bottle filling stations so that students and staff can quickly refill their reusable bottles with filtered water.

“AVID 10 students wanted to do an awareness campaign on the amount of waste at Homestead and the cost associated with the disposal,” Ms. Godfrey said. “HHS spends close to $40 thousand on garbage removal yearly.  A large portion is plastic bottles that students do not recycle.”

Katie Gebhardt, sophomore, decided to take the fundraising into her own hands and sell custom Highlander water bottles at sporting events and elsewhere to boost the money-raising process.

“I’m involved in sports and know how important hydration is so I decided to take on the project as my own,” Gebhardt said. “I contacted lots of water bottle companies telling them about the idea and story and asking for ‘sponsorships’. I found a company called Clean Bottle.”

According to Gebhardt, she customized the bottles and then, to sell them, she “went door to door, was at the football games, sent notices in the HHS Booster Blast and went to parent-teacher conferences to raise awareness, get donations and sell bottles.” Ms. Godfrey said that Gebhardt ended up raising close to $3,000 on her own to finish the project.

Thanks to an environmentally conscious idea and a pinch of dedication and perseverance, Highlanders can look forward to hands-free, “convenient hydration with a rapid fill of filtered water,” as the website for the Elkay EZH2O station says.