2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA
In order to reduce the amount of solid waste entering the Cache la Poudre watershed, people
need to understand the effects of their waste on the watershed. Indigo’s project began with educating middle school students at Chappelow Magnet School. She taught a 30-minute presentation to three 7th grade science classes. Before and after the presentation, Indigo took a brief survey of the students to see how much they cared about recycling and how the presentation changed this response. There was a 130% increase in students that gave a 10 for their response after the presentation.
In addition to this, she also created a mural from plastic trash. In order to do this, Indigo held a plastic cap collecting contest at Greeley Central High School. Over the course of the contest, she collected over 14,000 caps and created a mosaic. The mosaic took a little over 2,000 caps. The remaining caps were given to Chappelow Arts Magnet School, as they were doing a similar project.
The project was featured in the Greeley Central school newspaper. It was also posted on Facebook by the school. The original post has accumulated over 300 reactions.
The project easily reached the attention of over 1,000 people and kept over 14,000 caps from entering the landfill. More solid waste has been withheld through personal efforts of others as they have become aware of this problem.