The Games We Play

The current consumption and usage patterns of students and teachers with the water coolers in Srishti are not economical and create wastage of water. The current set up at each water cooler in Old Campus is that each floor has its own water cooler with a shelf beside it which has around 30 plastic cups that people use to get a glass of water. After drinking from the cup the user throws the cup in a bucket next to the cooler. When the bucket gets filled with cups one of the maintenance staff washes/rinses all the glasses and keeps them back in the shelf.

Wastage of water happens in various ways:

• The glasses (plastic cups) need to be washed at regular intervals throughout the day.
• People use these glasses as paint containers at times- this makes the glass look dirty even though it’s probably just stained. A person picking up such a glass rinses it again before using it. Rinsing it probably doesn’t remove the paint stain but possibly gives some sort of mental satisfaction.
• People pour themselves a full glass of water- drink half and chuck the rest.

Possible solutions or alternatives for the current system:

• Have one or two glasses on top of each cooler. People will have to use the same glass and not touch it to their mouth. In this sort of system people will have to trust that everyone is drinking from the glass in a hygienic way.
• Keep the glasses further away from the cooler. Make the “cost” of deciding to use a fresh glass every time more.
• Put a price to using a fresh glass. Like a small fee (1 rupee?) for every time a person wants to use a new glass.
• Remove glasses all together and force people to bring their own bottles.

For my nudge I used a combination of two of the solutions. Yesterday, 11^th of August I put up a sign on each water cooler saying- “In an attempt to reduce the wastage of water and limit the spread of illness tomorrow is “Bring your own water bottle to college day”. The signs were up by around 11 in the morning so that everyone in Old campus would have had a chance to see the sign by the evening.

Today , 12^th august, I arrived early to college (before any of the students or faculty) and wiped the top of the coolers, removed the previous days signs, removed the buckets next to the coolers, hid all the glasses except 2 for each cooler and put up a new sign saying- “Forgot to bring a bottle? Share these glasses – just make sure you don’t touch your mouth to the rim. The top of the water cooler has been cleaned thoroughly. Please leave the glass on top after use.”

At the end of the day, I replaced all the glasses to their shelves, put back the buckets in their place and put p a new sign “How much water would we save if there wasn’t a constant need to wash glasses? Help reduce wastage of water- bring your own bottle.”

My point is to promote the idea of everyone bringing their own bottles for water to college and reduce the amount if water wasted with the current system.