Campus Cleanliness
Just as aesthetics are an important element in high-traffic areas, hand hygiene may be even more essential, as thousands of people likely use bottle fillers and water coolers, making them a potential breeding ground for germs and bacteria.
According to a recently released report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics, in 2022 an estimated 5.5 percent of boys and six percent of girls between 5 and 17 years old missed at least 15 days of school over a 12-months period for health-related reasons, amounting to 5.8 percent of children overall. These types of health-related absences also impact college students. With bottle fillers and water coolers being such a common specification in schools and universities, those designed to minimize the risk of germs can play an important role in reducing the spread of illness.
When it comes to water coolers, newer models are being introduced to the market that feature push bars made of antimicrobial materials that reduce the risk of germ transmission while featuring a design that makes sanitization and cleaning simple. These push bars can now be activated at any touchpoint, reflecting usability and inclusion to accommodate all users.
Maintenance Support
Maintaining bottle fillers and water coolers can be a tough assignment for campus maintenance teams. In many older models, filters can be difficult to access due to tight spacing. Not only do maintenance teams need to remove the entire front frame from the cooler, they need to squeeze their hands into the fixtures in order to twist and remove the filters. This can be a time-consuming process, not to mention painful.
But newer and more advanced models are making access to the filter easier than ever with a swing-open cabinet that enables maintenance teams to simply open the cabinet for easy access to the filter and internal components. Additional new water cooler models also feature a drop-down assembly door that can be easily opened with a utility key that opens the push bar for quick maintenance.
Maintenance indicators have also made great strides forward. Many older bottle fillers would display a red light to indicate the filter needed to be replaced. But from a maintenance perspective, if the team didn’t replace the filter fast enough, guests would think there’s something wrong with the bottle filler and stop using it. Newer products feature a softer and more subtle, ambient white light to indicate filter status to not deter guests from hydrating.
When it comes to retrofitting, manufacturers are making the retrofit process easier with new models that match most rough-ins of existing products to simplify installation and make upgrading easier.
Sustainability and Wellness
Installing bottle fillers is a practical way to promote sustainability, reduce waste on campus, and preserve our planet for future generations. And while not a new phenomenon to the industry, it’s an important reminder as to how important they can be both in terms of sustainability and for human health.
By encouraging the use of reusable bottles, bottle fillers help minimize plastic waste, a significant environmental concern contributing to pollution and habitat destruction. It also conserves valuable natural resources, such as oil and water used in the production and transportation of plastic bottles. Considering Americans use about 50 billion water bottles per year, wasting more than a billion dollars’ worth of plastic (a material that takes 100-1,000 years to decompose), every bottle that can be conserved goes a long way.
Bottle fillers feature a counter display indicating the number of 16-ounce plastic bottles saved, as well as the water dispensed. In terms of water coolers, newer models are now limiting dispensed water to a 20-second maximum run time to conserve water.
Sloan recently launched its DropSpot™ Bottle Fillers and Water Coolers to promote sustainable drinking practices while enabling a pleasant bottle filling experience, enhanced by two backlit LED lights that illuminate the bottle filling area while in use for a variety of market applications.
Given our increasing reliance on reusable bottles—a health- and planet-saving shift—bottle fillers most likely will remain important fixtures throughout campus, and more sophisticated models and fixtures reflect this movement, a win-win for healthy hydration and a healthy planet.
