Single use plastic has become a staple in today’s fast paced world. With plastic bags, straws, containers, humans have become increasingly dependent. Americans buy 1 million plastic water bottles per minute, and only 9% of water bottles get recycled; the rest become trash. Water bottles take over 400 years to decompose which, in turn, will pollute our environment, leaking harmful chemicals and polluting the oceans. In 2015, Wesleyan sustainability undergraduates formed a team to brainstorm ways the campus can use less plastic water bottles, designing the Wishing Well. The Wishing Well is a portable water station that filters and cools hose water, therefore eliminating the need for plastic water bottles. Wesleyan’s machine shop brought the design to life with two functional Wishing Wells. The project was originally intended to be open-sourced and accessible, so others could ultimately replicate it by purchasing materials used with a simple assembly process; however, the project was abandoned once they graduated.
The Assistant Director of Sustainability at UMASS Dartmouth, Jamie Jacquart, decided to continue this abandoned project by requesting a new, functional Wishing Well for UMASS campuses that can be easily assembled without the use of a machine shop. The Wishing Well was assessed and redesigned by a team of UMASS engineers to fit this criteria. Jacquart was hoping to limit plastic water bottle consumption on UMASS’s campus as well as empower other organizations to do the same.
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