Blaise Pascal School inaugurates public water fountain and showcases student research on sustainable water consumption
On Thursday, 30 May, a large group of students and teachers of the Blaise Pascal school in Reggio Emilia, Italy, celebrated an important event: the inauguration of a public water fountain installed in the area in front of the science laboratories, with funds from the MULTIPLIERS project.
The event was the culmination of a couple of years of laboratory teaching activities and work-related learning programs, which involved about seventy students from the 5th and 3rd grades of the Applied Sciences High School. Activities involved an in-depth study of water resources, from the sources of supply in the provincial territory to the physical, chemical and safety characteristics of the water that flows from the tap at home. Students were able to export their skills outside of school in a series of events dedicated to students from other schools and to citizens in general.
The small inauguration ceremony was attended by Fiorenza Genovese, Arturo Bertoldi and Daniela Bergamotti of MULTIPLIERS partner EDUIREN, who thanked the principal Ruozzi of the IIS Pascal and all the teachers and students who participated, for the fundamental contribution as a driver of initiatives in the creation of an Open Science Community (OSC) in collaboration with numerous other city partners (Library Panizzi, Restaurant Pause Loris Malaguzzi. Reggiana Educatori, IC Aosta and Einstein, IPSSCC Filippo Re).
Also present was the new director of the Reggio Emilia Water Care Company, Alberto Montanari, who underlined the importance of “creating opportunities like this in which the world is made better in terms of equity and rights for all” and reiterated that “it is from school and young people that the most important and effective signals come”, recalling Italy’s 2015 Referendum on public water, the result of which requires shared efforts for better management of the resource.
Subsequently, students involved in MULTIPLIERS, introduced by their teacher Paola Semeghini, illustrated the results of a research project on packaging materials carried out during the hours of the Scientific Lab, which demonstrates with data in hand that the most sustainable solution remains abstaining from disposable containers of any kind.
In fact, Italy is the largest European consumer of bottled water and the study of the life cycle (LCA) of the 4 commercial containers studied (glass bottle, aluminum can, tetrapack brick and plastic bottle) highlights in any case a burdensome environmental cost at different levels (materials difficult to work with and energy-intensive production processes, transport with increased greenhouse effect and creation of waste difficult to collect and recycle). This cost can and must be avoided in our daily choices, in line with the UN objectives of the Agenda 2030.
