AMESBURY — Refill or recycle is the mantra at Amesbury Elementary School, which recently installed two water bottle filling stations to prove its point.

The bottle filling stations were funded with a grant from the Amesbury Educational Foundation, which sends information and applications to teachers so they can submit their ideas. This grant, known as The Captain’s Well grant, was received by the school through teacher Bruce McBrien.

“With the arrival of COVID, the water fountains became unusable,” McBrien said. “We were no longer allowed to utilize them for reasons of hygiene and that led to an issue of how do we get water now?”

McBrien said he noticed an alarming increase in plastic water bottles at the school and was trying to think of a solution when he remembered seeing bottle filling stations at other schools, including Amesbury High School.

“And it dawned on me that we could have them, even though this school is closing, they could be installed and then moved elsewhere,” McBrien said. “So I wrote a grant, and the grant was to install two water bottle filling stations in the elementary school, one on the first floor and one on the second floor.”

AEFI President Patty Hoyt said her committee was fully behind the grant request.

“We read this particular grant application with 100 percent support from our committee, knowing that it’s very important, first of all, to provide lots of fresh water for our students and staff, and that with the pandemic concerns, water bubblers had to be turned off,” Hoyt said.

“The Amesbury Elementary School building was old and wasn’t up for a lot of renovation because we’re building our new school,” she added. “We felt that this was a project that had environmental as well as health benefits for our staff and students so we were enthusiastic about supporting this.”

The new elementary school is being built close to Cashman Elementary School.

The filling stations have been a hit with students and staff, McBrien said.

“I have to tell you, the adults are as excited about the filling stations as the kids,” he said. “They are thrilled that we’re not using as many bottles of water as we were before.”

McBrien said the grant is only one part of the school’s work to encourage recycling.

“We try to encourage recycling culture in our school,” McBrien said. “We have blue bins that our DPW (Department of Public Works) director, Rob Desmarais, was able to get for us many years ago so that every classroom has a recycling bin, and you know that it’s working when one first-grader grabs another one’s hand and says, ‘No, that goes in the blue bin.’”

Hoyt said her biggest wish is that those who are lucky enough to be growing up in the Amesbury public school system are learning important ways how they can help keep their environment safe.