Author Archives: Chloe Sprecker

Protect our Pollinators

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Riley Wooten
Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado

Riley decided to create a pollinator friendly environment in the City of Greeley. Riley contacted Karen Scopel, the Natural Lands Coordinator for the City of Greeley, and selected a nature area for her proposal. The herbicide to dispose of the invasive species location is called Pumpkin Ridge which is next to the Sheepdraw trail. The entire area has recently been burned and sprayed with “Cheatgrass”. The goal is to increase native plant species that will also be pollinator friendly. In addition, she installed two inset houses in the area. The native organisms that were planted are Showy protect the pollinators student action project colorado Milkweed, Palmer Penstemon, Butterfly Milkweed, White Clover, Purple Coneflower, Mexican Hat, Yellow Coxie Flower, White Yarrow, and Black-Eyed Susan. In April, Riley organized a group of volunteers to clean the area, sow the seeds and install the insect boxes.

Rain Away!

2017 Berthoud, Colorado, USA

Emma Garner
Berthoud High School, Berthoud, Colorado

Emma Garner identified an area at Berthoud High School where most of the parking lot runoff accumulates. As a result, the area has become a soggy-muddy area filled with automobile oil and trash. Emma decided to build a rain garden in this area to filter out project rain away colorado student action project contaminates that are deposited there from the parking lot. Although the rain garden is a small site test, it can be expanded in the future by the school.

Pollinators: A Community Commitment

2017 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Aubrey Chacon and Monica Chacon
Union Colony Preparatory School, Greeley, Colorado

Aubrey and Monica engaged elementary students, teachers and community members to plant
pollinator gardens in Northern Colorado. They designed and taught each group about the impact pollinators community commitment student implementation pollinators have on our environment then helped each group create a garden. Each garden included flowers that attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. They created gardens at four schools and three churches around Northern Colorado. In addition, Monica and Aubrey distributed garden designs and seeds to each person so they could create their own gardens at their homes.

“Phyte Club”

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Dustin Elkins and Alexandria Riesberg phyte club project implementation colorado
Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado

In a school district where over half of students meet federal poverty guidelines, many students in the community do not have access to organic, healthy food and face cultural separation from the food they eat and where it
comes from. The spiraling growth of processed food and the food industry has created a relentless carbon footprint, which can be battled through local community gardening. By starting a garden program growing organic produce at the school, Dustin and Alexandria are providing classes and students with a hands-on resource to learn about their food, combatting the industrialized food processing industry (reducing the carbon footprint of food packaging, waste, and transportation). Once the school gardens begin to produce, they will donate the vegetables to the students who participated in creating the garden. In addition, they will sell the produce to the school lunch program through the Garden to School program. The money generated will be used to fund the upkeep and future development of the garden.

One Paint Can at a Time

2017, Milliken, Colorado, USA

Erin Engels and Keana Morris
Roosevelt High School, Milliken, Colorado

Throughout Weld County, leftover cans of paint are often tossed into the trash and sent to the landfill. Erin and Keana developed a plan to collect this unused paint. They worked with GreenSheen Paint Company (greensheenpaint.com) and organized a paint recycling day in their home town of Milliken. The students advertised at every school in their district and throughout the community. Although the weather did not cooperate, they collected over 1300 pounds of paint, stain and finishes. The water-based paint is remixed to create 16 new colors and the non-paint items were sent to the hazardous waste disposal site

Bee a Positive Change

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Brooklyn Johnson Bee positive change implementation student action colorado
Northridge High School, Greeley, Colorado

Brooklyn designed a pollinator garden at the Greeley Xeric Garden. She planted 10 pollinator specific plants that bloom at different times of year to attract local bees. In line with providing for native bees, she also created and placed bee baths and bee boxes in the garden. This created a source of freshwater and shelter for solitary bees in Colorado. Brooklyn planted
about 200 square feet of garden with bee-friendly flowers and did not use any insecticides or pesticides. Brooklyn considered multiple locations for this garden where bees would be able to live without detrimental human interference and had frequent visitation so that the garden would get Colorado student action project implemented attention and serve as an educational tool for the community.

In order to provide bees with a year-round food source, she placed plants that bloom at different points throughout the year, ensuring that there will be a continual source of nutrition for pollinators. In the spring, flowers like crocus, hyacinth, borage, calendula, and wild lilac will bloom. In the summer, bees enjoy bee balm, cosmos, Echinacea, snapdragons foxglove, and hosta. Zinnias, sedum, asters, witch hazel, and goldenrod
are late bloomers provide nectar in the fall. All of the flowers that were selected were known to attract bees and provide plentiful, easy to access nectar.

An information sign with a QR code was placed so visitors can educate themselves about the garden.

Batting Bugs Naturally

2017, Milliken, Colorado, USA

Devyn Wood
Roosevelt High School, Milliken, Colorado

When Devyn was a child, she lived in Washington State where there were hundreds of bats living near her home. After moving to Colorado, she noticed there were few, if any, bats in the area of her new home.
Understanding the connection between bat populations, insect populations and insecticide use, she decided to build bat houses and install them around her watershed. The project requires (1) determining locations to install bat houses; (2) building bat houses; and (3) installing bat houses. As the season permits, tracking of bat species can also be undertaken to determine how many bats are in the area. Devyn will be using a bat-detection device to monitor the newly built bat homes for increase in population and species. These results will be available in the fall of 2017.

10 Years of Pollution

2017, Milliken, Colorado, USA

Kristopher Anaya, Thomas Blake, Dalton Yost Colorado student action project
Roosevelt High School, Milliken, Colorado

This proposal involved reducing the use of plastic bags by promoting the use of reusable bags and making the community more aware of recycling them as well. The decomposition process of plastic bags takes more than 10 years which adds an unnecessary volume to the landfills. The team ordered 2000 reusable bags to hand out to students and staff at Roosevelt High School and the community. In addition,
the team redesigned the plastic bag recycling box at our local grocery store to make the box stand out to plastic bags consumers. This project has increased the use of reusable Colorado student action project grocery bags in the community while decreasing plastic in the local landfill.

Biodegradable Lunch Waste Project

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Mazlyn Freier LUNCH WASTE PROJECT student action Colorado
Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado

Mazlyn Freier from Greeley Central High school identified her school’s problem of adding over 10,000 Styrofoam plates from the school lunch program to the local landfill every year. Mazlyn contacted the school district Nutrition Services to determine the convert her school to compostable sugarcane plates in the cafeteria. Mazlyn contacted local companies for samples of their compostable plates. Finally, she selected Eco Products, a local food service supplier from Boulder, Colorado, for the sugarcane plates for the school. 19 cases of plates were ordered and delivered to the school for use in the cafeteria. In addition, Mazlyn contacted a local composting service that agreed to pick up the colorado student action lunch waste project plate waste twice a week. The school has been using these plates since April of 2017, and plan on continuing this practice. Mazlyn has contacted the other schools in the district with the goal of implementing this program throughout Greeley.

Jacob’s Big Project

2017, Cinncinnati, Ohio, USA
Jacob
Jacob’s big project is a coloring book for kids developed and designed by Molly Mariani, Abi Barret and Ashley Moher. The coloring book has several interactive pages that gets students of all ages involved in the conservation message. Along with the book, Ashley, Molly and Abi designed several worksheets for different age children. The one for younger students has pictures and the kids describe whether it’s helpful or harmful. The worksheets for older kids include a vocabulary sheet.

The team knew from the start that they wanted to do a project that involved younger students. They didn’t just want to design a book, so they thought if they made it more interactive, they could get younger students to understand their role in protecting the environment. Designing a coloring book that the younger students could color on was one way the girls could get the students more involved. They also made a change to their original plan by adding the interactive worksheets so that they could measure the students understanding of the problems and test their knowledge. The addition really boosted their project because it allowed them to measure their success through the kid’s ability to complete the activity worksheets.
Jacob
To implement their project, Ashley, Molly and Abi visited local schools, which included a preschool and an elementary school. For the preschoolers, they read the book aloud to them then the preschoolers completed the “helpful or harmful” activity. For the elementary school visit, the kids read along with the story and colored the book. After the book was finished, they completed the vocab sheet to apply their knowledge.