Senior Vaibhavi Kulkarni was recognized for securing a $5000 grant for a new refrigerated water bottle refill station at MHS at the April 18th MUSD board meeting.
The idea of the project first came to her from the role she held on the Valley Water Youth Commission, Kulkarni said. In her role, Vaibhavi worked on a variety of projects including a campaign to educate the youth on the importance of water conservation, she added.
Kulkarni started the process of applying for a grant in her sophomore year. During this time, the school was completely virtual due to the pandemic, and as a result, establishing communication between the organization and the district was difficult, Kulkarni said.
“It was really hard to link those two organizations, and forge that bridge between them,” Kulkarni said. “But once the communication was established, and both the parties knew about the project, my application was submitted,” she added.
Challenges relating to the various staff changes at both MUSD and Valley Water prolonged the project’s progress, Kulkarni said. The new bottle station did not get built until her senior year, Kulkarni added.
“I really wanted this process to happen earlier during COVID so that it didn’t really disrupt any student’s activities,” Kulkarni said. “But it did happen this year, and I’m grateful for that.”
MUSD Maintenance Operations and Transit (MOT) supervisor Abner Ames said that the MOT team works closely with school officials in the purchasing and installation of these water bottle stations for the district. The district-wide project of installing refrigerated water bottle stations across the elementary, middle, and high schools began right before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ames said.
“We started with a couple of elementary schools, and we got very positive feedback because the kids had access to a cool, cold source of water for the bottles,” Ames said. “Based on the recycling program that we have in place, we decided that it was a good thing for us to provide bottle filling stations rather than continue to have the kids bring their own plastic bottles.”
Students at MHS have reacted positively to the water bottle station recently installed in the vending machine complex next to the E building, Kulkarni said.
“The last time I visited, there’s this little screen on this station that says how many bottles, and I was so proud to see about 1000 bottles have been saved over the span of two months that the station has been installed,” Kulkarni said. “I think the student body has taken this really positively; they’re actually using the station.”
The water bottle stations around MHS have been convenient to junior Arjun Pai, especially since he participates in track and field, Pai said.
In the future, Kulkarni believes the school will invest more money into these water bottle stations, she said. Promoting the use of reusable water bottles will save a lot of plastic, she added.
“Overall our campus would be more beautiful, and it would contribute more to the environment,” Kulkarni said. “I think it’s definitely a great idea if we have more stations in the future.”