[August 22, 2011] Fill 'er up Tweet Aug 22, 2011 (The Philadelphia Inquirer - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- OK, so you've been conscientious and you've got your refillable water bottle. Maybe it's a fancy, colorful, bisphenol A-free wonder that you paid plenty for. Or maybe it's more like the one I saw a guy using not long ago: an empty food jar. (Yes, it was clean.) So now what? When you're on the go, where do you fill it? Do you try to wrestle it into place at a water fountain? Or, yech, fill it from the tap in a public restroom? Immaculata University in Pennsylvania has a great answer for students coming back to school this fall: Hydration stations. Over the summer, the university replaced 20 standard drinking fountains with new versions that have an additional outflow at the top, with a button you push just underneath to start the water flowing. And it's good old tap water. Supplied by Elkay, an Illinois company that makes water coolers and drinking fountains, each hydration station has an internal filter and a display showing the status of the filter. They also have tickers that count the number of fills, displaying it as the number of water bottles that are NOT going into a landfill as a result. That kind of nixes the recycling quotient, but what the hey. Although recycling rates are getting better, they're still not where they need to be. Earlier this month, a report by the shareholder advocacy group, As You Sow, found that of the 224 beverage containers sold annually in the U.S., only 29 percent by weight are recycled. Michael Gallagher, the president of the Immaculata environmental club, has already used them and is, dare I say it, gushing? "They're really cool," he said. "Really user-friendly." Gallagher, a history for secondary education major in the class of 2014, said about half of Immaculata students were using refillable bottles last year. The club is going to try to up the number this year by holding events and giving away bottles. So good news for Immaculata greenies, and cheers for the university. Happy hydrating, everyone. ___ Visit Sandy Bauers' blog at http://go.philly.com/greenspace. ___ (c) 2011, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer's World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com/ Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. _____ TO SUBSCRIBE TO GREEN Items in the Green package are not included in your MCT News Service subscription. You can subscribe to the Green package or purchase the items a la carte on MCT Direct at www.mctdirect.com. To subscribe, please call Rick DeChantal at Tribune Media Services at (800) 245-6536 or [email protected]. Outside the United States, call Tribune Media Services International at +1-312-222-4444 or e-mail [email protected]. _____ PHOTO (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]