Designed by: Benji Kent

In schools and communities bottled water has become the norm despite the energy it wastes and unnecessary garbage it produces.  Take a stand in your community against bottled water by raising awareness on bottled water issues, promoting the benefits of tap and selling reusable water bottles as an alternative. Reusable water bottles not only lower a user’s carbon footprint, they promote the use of Toronto tap water, a cheap, high quality eco-alternative.

Ban the Bottle 101

Time: Prep ~ 4-6 months
Cost: $15-22 per bottle, $30-100 for promotion
Grade Range: 10-12
Target: Whole School
Note: Click HERE to get a copy of our Energy Shift Checklist to help guide your team through the project.

Step 1 ~ Permission:

To start off this campaign, you’ll need permission both to sell the metal water bottles on school property and to receive any necessary start up costs for purchasing bottles. If your school is unable to purchase the bottles before the fundraiser, simply set up a system where students pay for their bottles before receiving them so the bottle costs are already covered.

Step 2 ~Research:

There are a number of companies producing metal water bottles, from Switzerland’s stylish aluminum Sigg bottles to Klean Kanteen’s simple stainless steel bottles. Research different distributors in your area to find the best fit for your school, simply go online and search “distributor, (name of bottle brand)”.  Before contacting your chosen distributors for a price quote decide on the size, style, approximate quantity, whether you’d like to personalize the bottle with a school logo and the maximum cost for the bottles you’d like to order.  If you’ve decided to pay the extra cost to personalize the bottles, start by creating high-resolution images in the correct size, decide as a group what works best and then send the image to the distributor.

Step 3 ~ Order

If you’ve decide to order a set number of bottles order now so they’re available when you start your promotion campaign. If you’re going to have students pay for their bottle first, hold off on this step until after your promotion.

Step 4 ~ Promotion

Designed by: Anji Kim

Create a full school promotion campaign to spread the word on the bottles you’ll be selling. Types of promotion include, posters, displays, announcements, jingles, an assembly and/or staged events. The key to promotion is to be creative and develop ideas that will engage the student body. To create a strong message, research hard-hitting facts on bottled water and feature them in your campaign. A great place to start your search is insidethebottle.org.  Creating teams for different areas of promotion (for example, posters, announcements) is a great way to organize your effort and will help you produce promotional materials in a shorter time frame. Promotion ideas include: Bottle Free Zone posters at school entrances and water fountains, a catchy jingle to play between classes, an assembly with a guest speaker, making buttons, placing vinyl stickers around the school, creating a display using empty water bottles, staging a fake protest, wearing campaign specific T-shirts or ties, holding a bottled water taste test, having speakers go to each class and displaying the metal bottles students can buy.

Button designed by: Anji Kim

Step 5 ~ Sell:

Now that everyone at school knows you’re selling bottles and why they should be using them, set up a station to sell them. Ideally this would be done within the same time frame as your promotion campaign. Make sure you make clear announcements on where and when you’ll be selling bottles. Create a deadline for purchasing bottles so students are encouraged to buy a bottle before they sell out. In addition to having a prominent selling station that is manned during a time like lunch, provide first period classes with order forms that you collect by the deadline.

Step 6 ~ Celebrate:

After your campaign is complete, let the school know how many bottles were purchased. To highlight the significance of their decision to turn to tap you could do an audit on the number of plastic water bottles in the recycling bin before and after the campaign, or announce facts on the amount of energy saved through their purchase. For an easy calculation, use the Pacific Institute’s estimate that the production and shipment of one bottle of water is equal to filling that bottle a quarter full with oil.

Year to year we amass CDs, DVDs, video games and books. For many of these items, once they’ve been watched, beaten or read they sit around unused. Holding a Green Exchange at your school gives these items new life.  During the Green Exchange students bring in items they no longer use, receive an exchange ticket and then use their ticket to get an item they will use. In the end, students walk away with something new and reduce their carbon footprint by re-using instead of consuming.

Green Exchange 101

Time: Prep ~ 5 weeks
Cost: $0-100.00 depending on promotion
Grade Range: 7-12
Target: Whole School
Note: Click HERE to get a copy of our Energy Shift Checklist to help guide your team through the project.

Step 1 ~ Permission:
Chose a date for the Green Exchange. Decide if you’d like to run the exchange during lunch or as a special event that classes visit during a period. Once you know the date and format get permission to hold the event. Don’t forget to ask permission to run a collection station in the school leading up to the exchange.

Step 2 ~ Items:
Decide what successful exchange items at your school would be. Potential items include: CDs, DVDs, books, video games, board games, and/or clothing. Create an outline for acceptable exchange items; quality is more important than quantity so set standards. For example, if someone brings all their Sponge Bob DVDs you’ll have to decide if that’s worth nine tickets. Other standards include checking that the item is in good condition (not scratched), suitable (not rated R) and legal (not pirated). Last but not least, where will untraded items go after the event? Look into local donation or community centres for an ideal choice.

Step 3 ~ Promote:
What’s the best way to spread the message at your school? Getting students excited about and participating in the exchange is the key to its success. Create cool posters, run announcements, get other clubs involved, hold an assembly with a relevant guest speaker and/or include a raffle for students to enter unused exchange tickets. Remember, if you’re going to hold an assembly, decide early, set your date and reach out to local organizations that speak on issues like carbon footprints, waste or reusing.

A raffle for students to enter unused exchange tickets is an awesome idea that increases participation since all students have a chance to come away with something.  To get raffle items at an affordable price look for in-kind product donations from local businesses. Click HERE for a donation letter template to help you get started.

Step 4 ~ Recruit:
To run a successful exchange you’ll need volunteers to help collect, sort and then monitor items on the day of the exchange.

Step 5 ~ Collect:
Leading up to the exchange hold at least four collection days in a prominent part of the school. Volunteers running the collection station should be familiar with the set standards for acceptable items; unacceptable items can still be collected for donation. Once an item is accepted give the student an exchange ticket to be used on the day of the exchange.

Step 6 ~ Sort:
After you’ve collected all your items sort them by category. Chose a space based on the number of items you’ve received, options include one large space with all items or separate classes/stores for each category. Display all the items on tables that are clearly marked.

Step 6 ~ Exchange:
Put on some music, have volunteers at each table or room and start exchanging! Depending on the number of volunteers, students can exchange at each item section or go to a centralized exchange station. If you’ve decided to run a raffle have a ticket drop-off box and pull tickets at the end of the day.

Step 7 ~ Wrap-up:
Donate all of the items that were not exchanged, let the rest of the school know how many people participated and feel good about a job well done!