Mt. Shasta’s Parker Plaza will soon be home to a drinking fountain and water bottle refill station. Community members and visitors alike will soon be able refill their own reusable water bottles with pure, world famous Mt. Shasta water. Spearheading this effort, W.A.T.E.R. worked with the City of Mt. Shasta Beautification Committee to make this project possible and last year the City Council approved a Water Bottle Refill Station & ADA drinking fountain at the NW corner of Parker Plaza with W.A.T.E.R. pledging to raise the needed funds. We were able to arrange a $5,000 grant from Plastic Oceans International’s ‘Rethink. Refill.’ program, a  $4,974 grant from the McConnell Fund of the Community Foundation of the North State, and W.A.T.E.R. provided the remaining $2,500 needed to complete the project. Many thanks to our generous supporters who made this possible! On June 4 W.A.T.E.R. delivered a check to the City for the final funds for the project. The City will install the station sometime this summer.

The station is part of a broader program by W.A.T.E.R. to encourage community members and visitors to reduce plastic pollution. Plastic pollution has become a global problem polluting water, soils, even the food we eat and the air we breathe, posing a threat to wildlife and human health. Whereas recycling has been promoted as a solution to plastic pollution, the reality is that plastic recycling is virtually a myth created by the plastic production and packaging industries to transfer responsibility for the pollution created by their products to the consumer. Shockingly, less than 9% of plastic ever made gets recycled or reused in other products. As a result, 79% ends up in landfills and the massive plastic waste gyres polluting the ocean and its wildlife--annually, ten million tons of plastic are dumped into the oceans alone. The remaining 12% is burned in other countries releasing toxic air pollution. Fifty percent of all plastic produced is for single-use purposes, used once and then thrown away. And, during the Covid-19 pandemic, sadly, the world has seen a staggering 30% increase in plastics pollution.

The refill station offers citizens the opportunity to reduce their plastic waste by providing a place to refill their own reusable water bottles. In addition, using a refillable bottle, instead of buying water in single-use plastic bottles made from petroleum products, helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to global warming.