Problem Statement

Everyday, about 1.5 billion plastic water bottles are bought and out of those 1.5 billion water bottles only a fraction of them are recycled. The use of plastic water bottles in today’s society is out of control. These water bottles pollute our environment by leaking harmful chemicals and littering our oceans. It takes over 400 years for them to decompose, so this problem is not going away soon. In 2015, Wesleyan sustainability undergraduate students formed a team to brainstorm ways the campus can use less plastic water bottles. From there, the idea of the Wishing Well was formed. They turned to their schools machine shop to help their idea come to life, and now Wesleyan has two functional Wishing Wells to use at school functions. Their goal was to design a portable water station that others could replicate by buying the materials and having a simple assembly process, however the project was abandoned after they graduated. The Assistant Director of Sustainability here at UMass Dartmouth, Jamie Jacquart, wants a functional Wishing Well for UMass campuses as well as a new design for a version 2 Wishing Well, the model that can be easily assembled without a machine shop.