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                         St. Pete Fountains! 

May 10, 2021

Zoe Stern & Kayla Ciak

For our cumulative action project in professor Huxster's Climate Change Communication class, we created an Instagram page to raise awareness about the lack of free healthy water in downtown Saint Petersburg and increase of plastic bottle purchases. We are proposing that bottle filling stations supplying cold healthy tap water be placed in parks and common hubs in downtown Saint Petersburg.

We found inspiration from the famous sparkling water fountains in Paris. The introduction of these fountains have created a new and exciting way to decrease the use of single use plastic and improve the health of their city. We created an Instagram because we felt that it was the best way to connect with St. Pete locals. Our purpose of obtaining a large support for these fountains was to ultimately gain the attention of local leaders in the St. Pete Parks and Recreation Department. We gained a small following pretty quickly and the responses so far have all been very positive. Here is our very first post and some of the feedback we got. 

After making our first few posts and allowing the page to gain more of a following, we created a petition on https://www.change.org/stpetefountains. Here we gained over 50 supporters!

    Here are some more of the posts generated on our Instagram educated St. Pete locals about the dangers of plastic bottles to our health, planet, and economy!

    Our next step was to take all of our feedback to the local parks department. We sent an email to (StPeteParksRec@stpete.org). 

    One class connection we found that best related to our topic was from Kahan et al (2011). Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to fit their perceptions of risk and related factual beliefs to their shared moral evaluations of putatively dangerous activities. According to a study done at Purdue University in 2011, it was found that important barriers to drinking tap water included perceived risks from tap water and the perceived safety of bottled water, and the convenience of drinking bottled water. Our idea to put in safe, free water fountains could make a change in the way that individuals living in St. Pete see tap water. Having more accessible drinking water that people trust will lead to a decrease in the need for bottled water, while saving the consumer money. These fountains will not look or feel risky to the consumer with there being no risk for disease or germs seeing as they will be touch-free. 

    Reflecting back on the process of this project, I learned how much of an impact switching to a fountain based water system versus a plastic water bottle based system could have. Places such as Vinoy Park and Grand Central Bus Station could easily house these water systems. The changes that we need to make in order to have this happen can be done on a local level, and learning how to contact resources like the St. Pete Parks Program was something that I know I will use in the future. 


                                                                       References:

Beardsley E. (2017). To Burst The Bottle Bubble, Fountains in Paris now Flow with Sparking Water. The Salt. www.npr.org 

Kahan. D. Jenkins‐Smith. H. Braman. D. (2011). Cultural cognition of scientific                 consensus, Journal of Risk Research, 14:2, 147-174, DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2010.511246

Orset, C., Barret, N., & Lemaire, A. (2016). Are consumers concerned about plastic water bottles environmental impact? (No. hal-01589911).

Zoundi I. (2017). 9 Reasons Bottle Filling Stations Should Replace Every Drinking Fountain. Elkay Bottle Filling Stations. 9 Reasons Bottle Filling Stations Should Replace Every Drinking Fountain - BeCause Water

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