Office of Campus Sustainability

Toro WaterSmart Partner Award

BGSU was recognized in Spring, 2010 as a Toro WaterSmart Partner.  This award recognizes those institutions that have incorporate sound and sustainable water conservation principles into their campus operations landscape irrigation systems.

Water Bottle Filling Stations

Bottling and shipping water is the least energy efficient method ever used to supply water. 90% of the cost of bottled water is due to the bottle itself, which requires 24 million gallons of oil to produce a billion plastic bottles. With only about 20% of bottles being recycled, Americans dump 38 million plastic bottles from water into the landfill each year, which won't even begin to decompose for another 700 years. With bottled water as the second most popular beverage in the United States, BGSU recognized the importance of finding a way to reduce the enormous carbon footprint that comes from drinking bottled water.

A Net Impact BGSU member, Morgan Daniel, begin this movement by writing a proposal for the Student Initiative Green Fund to install two water bottle filling stations in the Bowen Thompson Student Union and Olscamp Hall in Spring 2012.

Water bottle filling stations encourage the use of re-usable water bottles instead of purchasing bottled water. The students at BGSU showed support and interest in more stations on campus, which resulted in a collaboration between the Undergraduate Student Government and Net Impact BGSU.

Pictured above is the water bottle refill station located at Olscamp Hall

USG Auxiliary Affairs Chair, John Clevenger, and Net Impact BGSU Cheif Executive Officer, Lance Kruse, teamed up with Daniel to write another Green Fund proposal for two more stations to be added to both the Student Union and Olscamp Hall. These stations are to be installed in Summer 2013. In addition to this, Clevenger and Kruse are working with the architectures for the Student Recreation Center renovations to install numerous water bottle filling stations. These stations are expected to be hands free and contain digital counters (to see how many bottles of water have been avoided by using the station).

Also, the Perry Field House installed its own water bottle filling station in the lobby next to the turf room and the Office of Campus Sustainability was gifted another filling station, which is to be installed into the Business Administration building.

By the end of Summer 2013, BGSU is expected to have 6 water bottle filling stations installed, and have another 10-12 plan to be installed in the Student Recreation Center.

Water bottle facts found at greenupgrader.com