Author Archives: Chloe Sprecker

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2018-2019, Arlington, Virginia, USA

Sophia, Sarah, Angelique, Mayli, Harry, Kevin, Will, Helonna, Anyie, Ivan, Bryant, Tikarra, Alexis, Siya, Hailey, Billy, and Maggie noticed how many items that should have been recycled after lunch were ending up in the trash, and how much trash spoiled what had been placed in the recycling bin. They decided that the solution was a better sorting system for trash and recycling in their school cafeteria.

They proposed to change the current way they throw out trash and save recycling in their cafeteria. In their improved system they will have different bins for different lunch items. When all the paper and plastic are recycled, their system will keep them out of the landfills and water below the landfills. They will also be saving custodians time and work.

First they will have a separate bin for trash, food, dirty napkins, and plastic packets.
Then students will pour out milk or juice into a separate bucket. The way students do it now, the milk and food make the trays and cartons gross so that they cannot be recycled.
Then, the straws from the milk cartons will be put in a plastic recycling bin.
Plastic containers will also go into the plastic bin.
Next students will throw their empty milk cartons into a separate bin with other paper.
Once the cardboard trays are empty any food left on the tray can be scraped into the trash bin.
Finally, cleaned cardboard trays will be stacked on racks instead of trays being thrown in the trash. Without this, custodians have to take out the trays from the trash with their hands, and put it in another trash bag.

The school principal has approved this change, and students are working out the details with the custodial staff. Having separate trash racks, bins, and buckets will help a lot. The result will be less plastic in the watershed and more recyclable materials kept clean enough to make recycling easier for everyone.

CONSOLIDATE VILLA ESPIL AS A BUTTERFLY GARDEN

2018 Villa Espil, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EES N° 5, Villa Espil, San Andrés de Giles. Students: Mateo, Isaias, Tamara, Candela

This project is based on the winning project of 2016, Villa Espil, a Garden for Butterflies. It intends to regenerate a biodiversity production space, involving everyone in town, by planting plants that contribute to the return of many butterfly species that today have disappeared due to the lack of environment that favors their development.

butterfly garden student action villa espil

The new proposal is to build a small nursery / laboratory within the school premises in which students can learn with hands-on learning. The aim of the nursery is to learn how to produce native plants that host butterflies, which will be needed in the gardens of the town, and also come in contact with manageable complex biological variables involved in the cycle of reproduction of butterflies related to the native plants of the place.

This project will be completed December 2019.

First Grey Water

2018 Villa Lia, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EES N° 3 “Mariano Ustariz”, Villa Lía, San Antonio de Areco. Students: Joaquín, Rocío, Morena, Tobías

The project focuses on the environmental problem of how laundry water is handled, in a town without sewers. As a field task, students analyzed and quantified the scale of the problem being investigated. Proposed solutions to address this issue include an awareness campaign about the effects and possible solutions to the treatment of soapy water, and the development of grey water treatment module by using small homemade wetlands. Simultaneously, a dry phytoremediation swamp is being built at the school to treat grey waters from school bathrooms.

E.E.E (ECOLOGICAL EDUCATION SPACE)

2018 Carmen de Areco, Buenos Ares, Argentina

EES T N° 1, Carmen de Areco. Students: Nicolás, Agustina (all the classroom was involved with the implementation)

This Project intends to create a classroom-space dedicated to natural sciences and new technologies. This classroom-space will have laboratory characteristics in which native plants, both aquatic and terrestrial, will be produced, based on a novel production system such as aeroponics and the associated parmaculture.

student action implementation EEE This project combines other CFW projects; they used arduinos system and the idea of the 2017 winning project “smart light” that manages the light intensity and the day / night duration. They are using renewable energy, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal peltier cells and the whole system is robotic and managed by arduinos. They have humidity, co2, and intensity sensors and different types of luminosity.

They also wanted to make an aquatic system and a system with algae for a biofilter. They will be breeding native fish to re-populate the streams in the area. All this will be done within a research framework supported by sensors and powered by renewable energies.

The Hummingbird in Action

student hummingbird implementation

2018 Tres Sargentos, Carmen de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EES N°3, Tres Sargentos Carmen de Areco. Students: Marcos, Solange, Brisa, Paula (with the participation of all the classroom during implementation)

The aim of this project is to continue with last year’s project “My friend the hummingbird”. That project’s objective was to re-forest the town of “Tres Sargentos” with native trees and bushes, to encourage the presence of birds, specially the hummingbird.

planting a garden

The first step taken was to build a greenhouse in school premises where students planted 1000 seeds of which only 50 plants grew. So, in this second stage, the students of this project worked on mistakes made last year and as a result, they produced more plants.

They finished the year participating in a market where they exchanged plants and it was open to the entire community. The project ended with the plantation of the trees grown at school and other plants and flowers donated by different gardens and people of the town around a large poster made of mosaics at the entrance of the town.

student action group photo hummingbird mural

* Some Plants were donated by: Fundación Senderos del monte, Reserva de Gualeguaychu, Vivero de la reserva de Ribera Norte de San Isidro, Vivero de Chicos Naturalistas and Basanta family, Pablo Peliasco, Mauro Fossati and Rodriguez family.

Watershed Art Mural

2018, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Rebecca Knapp, a student from Miles Macdonell Collegiate, wanted to educate her fellow students about the damage that improperly disposed waste can have on our watersheds. She came up with idea to turn trash into art to get her message across. This mural and plaque have been put up in her school to remind everyone who sees it to help keep their watershed free of garbage and plastic.

watershed art mural

WATERSHED BIOLOGY FIELD TRIP

Watershed Biology Trip Group

2018, Sacramento, California, USA

Evelin Pelayo knew that if her fellow students were to become stewards of the watershed, they first needed to engage directly with it through hands-on study of our natural resources. Without this direct experience, she felt it would be more difficult for her classmates to feel connected to the natural world and make choices to protect it. Therefore, Evelin wrote a proposal to fund a field trip to Donner Summit, where students would collect and analyze data under the guidance of Headwaters Institute staff.

Watershed Biology Trip 1

Each group studied a different aspect of Watershed Biology. For example, her group studied water depth and flow in relation to the number and species of invertebrates, while another sampled vegetation at various distances from water to compare.

Evelin’s Caring for Our Watersheds proposal and funding from Nutrien helped more of her classmates have this unique experience, in which they learned about scientific data collection techniques, the interaction of biotic and abiotic factors, the local environment, and each other on a whole new level.

Putah Creek Clean-Up

2018, Sacramento/Davis, California, USA

While Simon Downes-Toney goes to school at The MET Sacramento, he lives in the nearby town of Davis, California. Therefore, when choosing a location for his Caring for Our Watersheds project, he chose a place near and dear to his home and heart, the banks of Putah Creek.

Putah Creek flows through the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, where many students and residents utilize a paved path along the waterway. Simon organized a clean-up day, where he and his fellow classmates walked this riparian corridor and collected trash and debris.

This simple, straightforward project helped keep trash from entering the waterway, protected wildlife and waterfowl that reside there, and cleaned and beautified a public space enjoyed by many in the community.

A VERTICAL GARDEN DEMO

2018, Sacramento, California, USA

Vertical Garden Demonstration

As Ella Mills and Ava Siemering of George Washington Carver High School shared an interest in horticulture, they knew they wanted to grow plants as part of their Caring for Our Watersheds project.

After doing some research, they learned about vertical gardens and how they can allow people to utilize the space available in urban environments more efficiently and economically. In addition, they can help improve air quality in congested areas, as well as provide food, aesthetic value, and energy savings. They decided that they wanted to experiment with different designs for these gardens using recycled, or reclaimed materials and create one as a demonstration for their garden class at school.

This process led them to create a small vertical garden which demonstrated how to place plants with higher water requirements on top and plants that need less water below. The lower plants can survive on what drips out of the holes from the ones watered on top. They presented their hands-on experiment in water conservation and horticulture to the students in the garden club and talked about the benefits of vertical gardening.

Campus Mural and Garden

2018, Sacramento, California, USA

Jesha Morgan, Jackson Mossman, Emma Lotter, and Dominic Wing, students at George Washington Carver School of Arts and Sciences, combined their passions for art and gardening in their Caring for Our Watersheds project.

Campus Mural

In an effort to communicate an environmental message, beautify their campus, and demonstrate water-wise planting, this group completed a project that included painting a large water- and nature-themed mural and planting a small California native species garden in an adjacent area. They hope to awaken a sense of environmental consciousness in the student body as they see and interact with the art and garden.