Nova Scotia Community College
IN-3: Innovation 3

NSCC has recently installed “Hydration Stations” at all of its 13 campuses across Nova Scotia. Hydration stations are touch-free, hygienic, water dispensers that are an easy and convenient way of filling up a reusable water bottle. They also filter and cool the dispensed water which makes for a better experience than filling directly from a tap. The Hydration stations are installed to promote the use of reusable water bottles. The goal is to one day eliminate the sale and use of disposable water bottles on the campuses. Every year billions of disposable water bottles are used and only a fraction of those bottles are properly recycled, leaving billions to go into the landfills. Just one hydration station can save as many as 36,000 standard 1L bottles a year. Many of the hydration stations installed have bottle counters on them. This displays the amount of disposable bottles saved from the landfill. This program is innovative in that it not just one or two hydration stations installed it is campus wide and every NSCC campus has multiple hydration stations being installed. This is promotes the use of reusable water bottles at all the campuses across the province with the goal of one day eliminating the use of disposable bottles altogether.