A year ago, Palmer Trinity School alumna Caitlin Pomerance Waks, co-founder of Debris Free Oceans, spoke at the school about the harmful impact of marine debris on our oceans. Today, the school became one of the first to phase out single-use plastic bottles.

“The presentation given on marine plastic pollution brought this issue to the forefront of our school’s community awareness,” says science teacher and director of environmental stewardship Dr. Leopoldo Llinas. The school’s new policy, established in February 2019, pledges that no PTS money will go toward the purchasing of water in single-use plastic bottles.

In 2013, the school began a Water Fountain Retrofit Program. All bottle-filling stations also include a filter as well as an electronic counter that tracks the number of single-use plastic bottles saved as a result of refilling. They also bought double-wall stainless steel thermal bottles last August. The school community has pledged to use a refillable bottle whenever possible, drink tap water where public drinking water is available or buy beverages in aluminum cans or glass bottles.

Plastic bottle waste ends up in rivers and seas where it degrades into microplastics that are easily consumed by fish and sea life. Plastic bottles make up a third of all plastic pollution in the sea.