Drinking water is important for hydration and overall health, fitness, and cognitive function, and especially in today’s environment, adequate hydration is vital for a properly functioning immune system. Many aren’t fully aware about the many benefits of drinking water in school.
How are schools encouraging and working towards ensuring students are adequately hydrated? They’re making it more accessible. Schools have evolved over the years from relying on drinking fountains and vending machines to providing sustainable solutions that benefit everyone.
To promote the benefits of drinking water in schools, here are ways to provide accessibility and amplify the importance of staying hydrated.
Offer Reusable Water Bottles
Students today are well-connected to what’s going on with the world around them. Part of their concerns includes the environment and how plastic waste is causing land overfills and ocean pollution for marine life. As a result, they seek alternative options when it comes to drinking filtered water from plastic bottles, which has been popular among previous generations.
Some schools have gone so far as to implement bans on plastic water bottles, while others have invested in filtered water stations to keep students healthy and hydrated. Either way, offering students reusable water bottles is an easy solution to encourage drinking water in schools.
Start a Water Drinking Contest
In addition to accessibility, accountability plays an important role in encouraging the benefits of drinking water at school. A water drinking contest promotes friendly competition with the promise of a reward at the end, which instantly improves engagement.
Whether implemented on a grade school or high school level or as a wellness initiative among college dorms, positive reinforcement from peers is helpful. By setting up classroom water stations for convenience and/or using hydration apps as tracking tools, it helps students to reach their goals and get in the habit of drinking more water daily.
Host a Health Week
Another way to promote the benefits of drinking water is through a specialized health week where students can learn about best practices for diet and exercise to help with their physical and mental health. While students may have a general idea of why water is good for them, they may not realize the side effects that can occur if they don’t drink enough of it.
While most kids want to reach for a sugar-sweetened beverage at recess, it’s important to encourage kids to go for safe drinking water instead. Not only does this improve water intake, but it also prevents dehydration. One of the greatest healthy habits you can teach your kids is proper hydration from a young age. As long as a child is drinking school water from a water dispenser or fountain, they will be able to stay hydrated and support their growing bodies.
Avoiding Dehydration Through Ongoing Education
Dehydration can lead to a variety of health problems. It can cause headaches, fatigue, and muscle cramps, all of which can limit active students and, ultimately, affect their performance in school and sports. Regardless of school level, ongoing education never hurts.
Teaching and reminding students to stay hydrated can help them perform better during certain activities, such as taking a test, participating in sports, and staying focused in class. To create healthy habits, it takes consistency and tracked progress until it becomes cemented in the mind. Instilling fun into any educational opportunity increases participation and allows students to see the benefits of drinking more water.
Experiencing The FloWater Difference
Access to clean water in schools is a necessity. Offering the option of purified water on-demand through FloWater’s Water Refill Stations encourages students to drink more water. In addition to this accessibility, FloWater offers benefits that aren’t available when drinking water from public water systems and plastically packaged drinks like sodas, sports drinks, and even bottled water.
With FloWater, you can have confidence knowing the water quality is top-notch from every hydration station you put in. In fact, there are many filtered water benefits that you might not even be aware of. Using a water cooler in school deserves attention to give students a thorough understanding of what makes this water so special.
By increasing water access, students will tend to go toward the water dispenser over purchasing a sugar-sweetened beverage. This is especially true and important for schools resuming in-person classes in 2021. Here are several ways schools can benefit from having FloWater available.
Advanced Purification For a Clean, Crisp Taste
Drinking fountains have been used in private and public schools for decades and unfortunately, many of those systems haven’t been replaced or updated for years, if ever. The result is contaminated water.
Specifically, the presence of lead has been an issue for many cities with older pipes and systems. There can be many health issues of lead in drinking water, which is why all water sources should be filtered before consumption. Toxins leach into the water, making it unsafe. In other instances, the water itself may be deemed passable but may not taste or smell pleasant, which leaves many seeking other options than what’s currently available. In fact, 87% of customers trust FloWater over water fountains.
Students can feel confident about the water quality they’re drinking with FloWater water bottle filling stations for schools. FloWater changes tap water by processing it through seven advanced filters. This ensures you are always drinking safe water that supports healthy hydration. The first three steps are focused specifically on removing up to 99% of solids, chemicals, pesticides, and other particles found in the tap.
The remaining four steps help to improve the water by eliminating unpleasant odors and tastes and adding back important elements, including electrolytes (found in sports drinks and coconut water) and essential minerals. The result is great-tasting, purified water every time water is dispensed.
Eco-Friendly Technology That Reduces Plastic Waste
FloWater’s Water Refill Station also eliminates the need for plastic bottles and reduces the amount of plastic waste on campus. By having the option of drinking purified water without the need for individual, one-use bottles, it fits in with the values of students today.
The Refill Station fits any size reusable water container and takes up little space, thanks to its slim and sleek design. It also has energy-saving features like LED lights and sleep mode to keep operating costs and energy use low. By factoring these benefits into the FloWater model, students can feel good about where their water comes from and know that it’s going to taste good too.
Convenient Replenishment to Accommodate Crowds
School halls are brimming with activity, especially when it’s time to switch classes. It can quickly get chaotic and crowded, which is especially important to factor in with any school reopening strategy in 2021. These short breaks are when students fill up their water bottles before the next class begins. A quick, reliable solution is what they need to hydrate regularly.
FloWater’s rapid water dispenser fills up a large, 24-ounce container in under 10 seconds. It keeps the line moving and is built to handle a large capacity of people. The water station holds seven gallons of purified water ready to go at all times. It doesn’t matter if you’re the first or last person in line, you’ll still receive the same, crisp, chilled water as the people at the front. Every time water dispenses, the tanks are refilled automatically to ensure everyone gets the same drinking experience.
With Covid-19 continuing to impact normal life, it’s important for schools to be aware of the funding available to help them support reopening measures. We’ve outlined everything to know about CARES Act school funding and how to prepare schools for the return back to in-person activity.
Largely Maintenance-Free Water Source
After the Refill Station is set up by FloWater’s certified technicians, there’s minimal maintenance required by school personnel. No more dealing with slow or broken faucets or separating plastic water bottles from the trash when this dispenser is the main source of water for the school.
For the majority of customers, filter changes are only necessary once per year and are taken care of by service technicians. No more swapping out plastic water bottles at school, or waiting for the vending machine to restock with more plastic waste. The station runs perfectly fine on its own with barely any maintenance required.
The simple, one-touch button sends a steady stream of purified water through the recessed nozzle, which means the container never has to touch where the water is coming from. This helps to limit the amount of germs and grime that normally lingers when using drinking fountains or standard water coolers. Additionally, the stainless steel tanks are sanitized without the use of chemicals, thanks to the activated oxygen used as part of the filtration process.
Give Students Water They Want When They Want It
The key to increasing the number of students who have access to clean drinking water in schools is dependent on two simple things: offering an innovative purified water solution and continuing to promote the benefits of hydration through education and events. When you have both of these in play, it encourages students to drink more water.
Staying hydrated is one of the top pillars of good health, which is why it should be encouraged more in school since that’s where students spend the majority of their week. Students who are properly hydrated feel and perform better at all levels. It helps them to concentrate, elevate their physical activity, and reduces the frequency of illness, among other benefits.
Installing touchless hydration stations that dispense free, purified water will also help with increasing sustainability in schools. Without the need for plastic, students will instill good habits while they’re roaming the halls, which they’ll hopefully carry with them in their daily life at home and into their adult years. There’s no need to rely on faulty drinking fountains or beverages from plastic bottles when FloWater is readily available.
