Ship 5’s Refillable Water Station Grand Opening – Youth Environmental Summit

Sea Scout Ship 5 invites you to their Refillable Water Station Grand Opening – Youth Environmental Summit on Saturday, May 21, 2022, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm at Solomon Jacobs Landing, 19 Harbor Loop, Gloucester, MA. Check out their Facebook event!

The Problem—Plastic in the Ocean

In partnership with the Gloucester Harbormaster, Sea Scout Ship 5 collects, sorts and logs trash from the public boat landings we clean on Cape Ann every weekend during the summer. Everyone in the crew picks up, sorts, logs and disposes of trash. Over the past 6 years, we have logged over 35,500 items on the Marine Debris Tracker, MDT. In 2021, we decided we wanted to find a way to be more proactive, help reduce the amount of pollution that finds its way into the water. We talked about the trash every time we sorted the trash and were amazed at what we found.

The most common items found at our trash clean ups are plastics.

As a group, we figured that if we could reduce the number of water cases being purchased daily, the result would yield fewer plastic bottles at the boat landings.

The Solution—Install a Refillable Water Station

We approached the harbormaster with the idea of installing a refillable water station. He enthusiastically agreed to having the station mounted to the harbormaster building, which is a great location because of the amount of foot traffic in that area. The beauty of this solution is, the community can feel good about using the refillable water station. They become part of the solution just by getting free water and can stop buying cases of water.

The refillable water station is a singular event that is actually a culmination of many hours of work performed by Ship 5 and assisted in many ways by our associations and partnerships and will continue even after this milestone event. At any one time we have between 10 and 20 participants actively cleaning and or working on this project. Sparked by our boat landing trash cleanups, the crew worked on creating this solution through NMEA youth conference presentations, designed layouts and sketches, and coordinated with the necessary individuals and authorities (Gloucester Harbormaster, Department of Public Works, building inspector, plumber, NOAA and NSF) to get everyone on board with the idea. Although a lot of the coordination was done by the Skipper of Ship 5, the real work and planning that led us to this point was done by all of the Sea Scouts. Ship 5 crew are the heavy lifters that made this possible!

The station is now installed and covered for the winter on the harbormaster building. The water station will be operational from mid-May to mid-October. The ship has agreed to maintain the station by cleaning it every day and tracking the amount of plastic water bottles being saved.

Installations like this refillable water station are the first of many steps to cleaning up our harbor.

The Grand Opening Event

The Refillable Water Station Grand Opening – Youth Environmental Summit is scheduled for Saturday, May 21, 2022, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm at Solomon Jacobs Landing, 19 Harbor Loop, Gloucester, MA. The event started as a ribbon cutting event with all of our associations invited to speak. It has since evolved into what may be the first of many youth environmental summits. We are inviting all of our associations to speak, tell us who they are, how they are involved with youth (present and future), and what this refillable water station represents. This refillable water station project would not have been possible without the support and association of our partners. The public is invited, and we plan on handing out reusable stainless steel water bottles with our logo to spread awareness. Invited organizations will have space for tables where they can talk to the public in more depth about their environmental involvement.

What’s Next for Ship 5?

We have a few ideas on how to move forward, but we want to see how this goes before committing to anything. If this ‘Ship 5 Youth Environmental Summit’ works and the ship wants to have another one the following year, that will have to be discussed after the summit. There was talk of installing another refillable water station. This is also doable but again, the ship will have to discuss this at the end of the summer. If we can handle the work and want to install another station, we already have a location in mind! If we choose not to expand this specific endeavor, we will still move forward with environmentally conscious projects that benefit our community.

This project is a natural extension of what we have been doing all along: preserving our ocean.

This event helps us to involve the community and hopefully inspire other youth groups to join us in our efforts to conserve and protect the environment. We would encourage other environmental groups (youth or otherwise) to sponsor the installation of a refillable water station. We are more than happy to share our experiences to ensure that others have a successful project. We would encourage them to participate in our Youth Environmental Summit and show off their success. The more the merrier!

About Ship 5

Sea Scout Ship 5 Gloucester MA is under the Boy Scouts of America and chartered by the Gloucester Elks lodge 892. Ship 5 is a combination of boys and girls aged 14-21 and Explorers aged 11-13. Although Ship 5 is involved in a lot of community service projects with the Harbormaster, Shellfish Warden, Mass Oyster Project, etc., we also have fun doing a variety of activities like sailing with SailGHS, learning knots and navigation with a retired nautical engineer, and exploring archeology sites with a local retired Marine Archeologist, just to name a few.

Sea Scout Ship 5 Crew