by Natalie McCurdy

TapOut, a movement with the purpose to eliminate single use plastic water bottles, was introduced as a club this past year. Club advisor, Chloe Shrager heard about the club through its founder at Paly, Norga Herwitz. “I thought it would be a lot of fun to bring TapOut to Gunn, and bring another thing into our community,” Shrager said. While there are many clubs on campus, there were none focused on environmental issues before TapOut. “[Gunn] wasn’t being as environmentally focused as we can afford to be,” Shrager said. Through the efforts of Shrager and 20 active club members, single-use plastic water bottles are no longer sold at Gunn, and within a year of TapOut’s debut on campus, the number of students with environmentally-friendly water bottles seemed to be on the rise.

With the goal to make the school’s carbon footprint greener, TapOut designed and sold their own reusable bottles on campus. “We brought in multiple designs of reusable water bottles last year, and this year we are hoping to start selling the black stainless steel water bottles from the lunch line,” Shrager said. As for the future, Shrager hopes to make more positive environmental changes to Gunn by stepping down as president. “The idea of moving on from president this year is also to give me a little extra free time to pursue other individual environmental projects on campus,” Shrager said. “I’m hoping to work with the administration to look into how Gunn can feasibly transition from using plastic lunch trays and utensils to a fully reusable system of washable trays”

This coming year Shrager is thankful to have such a great team to work with and excited to make Gunn a more environmentally friendly place to be.