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Description
Increase the use of secondary raw materials instead of plastics and to raise awareness of the consequences of our decisions on the state of the ocean. The Project carried out a survey to identify consumption habits of plastic bottles and requirements for an "environmentally friendly" water bottle. A water refill station was developed and installed in IPVC facilities, and a bottle was created which allows for large-scale reuse. The project plans to install 9 refill stations distributed by IPVC, produce 6000 bottles, reduce 8 kg of recycled plastic and support 25 awareness campaigns.
Summary of project results
The Project intends to increase the use of secondary raw materials to replace the use of plastics by promoting the development of a refill station for plastic-free reusable water bottles, a process that will begin with the implementation of a survey of a wide group of users to define the functional requirements of these refilling stations and a bottle.
Conduct a survey to the target audience in order to prepare the requirements booklet.
Prepare the bottle and refill station requirements.
Develop the refill station project and produce the equipment.
Develop the bottle design and produce it.
Put into operation in the Institute of Viana do Castelo IPVC.
Calculate plastic avoided from use of the refill station.
Raise awareness through dissemination of results.
This project placed 8 refilling stations on the IPVC University Campus and 1 mobile station in schools and on beaches in the region, and promoted their use as well as the Refill H2O reusable bottle. The requirements to be met by the filling station and the reusable bottle were based on analysis by a survey disseminated among the IPVC community.
As part of this project, several scientific works were carried out and published, and a Smartbottle Refill_H2O bottle was created and won an international award.
3355 water fillings were recorded at the installed stations, which represents a saving of 50.33 KG of single-use plastic (average of 15g per 50cl bottle). This value would surely increase to the hundreds of kg of single-use plastic saved when considering the use of single-use bottles from IPVC bars, and the refilling of bottles with tap water.
It was possible to observe a change in behavior among students at IPVC schools and at the “Centro Académico” residence. However, there was a difficulty in changing students'' behavior when using the Refill H2O station, often opting to refill their bottles at water points on the school grounds. It is known that changing behaviors can take years, which is why it is the role of IPVC, as a higher education institution, to continue to encourage the use of the station and the bottle, thus avoiding the consumption of more than 15,000 bottles per year.
It is worth mentioning the possibility of replicating this type of solution in donor countries, where it is expected that it would be very well received given the economic and cultural characteristics of these countries, factors that have a strong influence on consumer choice.