City Working to Become More
Environmentally Friendly Workplace

The City of Pensacola is taking steps toward becoming a more environmentally friendly workplace, announcing today a new water bottle initiative encouraging employees to reduce plastic waste.

Through the initiative, reusable water canteens have been distributed to all City employees, with a goal of reducing the number of plastic water bottles used at City Hall and all City buildings.

Employees are encouraged to refill their canteens at one of the manual filtered water dispensers on the second and fifth floors of City Hall, which track the number of plastic bottles saved from disposal.

These dispensers are also located at Pensacola Police Department and the Field Services Center, and more dispensers may be added in the future. The water dispenser at PPD has saved more than 22,400 plastic bottles from disposal since it was installed about two years ago.

“What we hope to do is, we hope to change behavior,” Mayor Robinson said after making the announcement at his Monday, June 10 press conference. “One plastic bottle is not something, but if you change behavior over time, what you can make is a significant difference…the more we can get people to think about reduce and conserve, the better we’ll be.”

In a memo sent to City staff, Mayor Robinson also encouraged employees to recycle and reduce waste wherever possible. In addition to the water bottle initiative, the City has worked to ensure all of its buildings have separate bins for recycling, along with eliminating Styrofoam products from City Hall.

Mayor Robinson will collaborate with City staff to continue looking at other ways to reduce waste and work toward becoming a better, greener organization. 

“We’re not going to save the earth tomorrow, but if we take little steps, we’re going to do it in the future,” Mayor Robinson said. “We’re going to make a much better world.”