2016, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina
This project is based on the school developing and creating three educational modules about how to use solar photovoltaic energy, hydraulic energy and wind energy. This project was implemented together with the UNSADA (San Antonio de Areco University).
2016, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina
– EES N°4 Malvinas Argentinas –Students: Carlos Roman Barrios, Brisa Regina Gambatesa, Alexis Fabián Sambugnah, Sabrina Trinidad Sosa
This project will focus on an environmental problem associated with waste produced by the horse racing industry, what is known as “the horse bed”.
Students proposed the implementation of a worm compost (vermicompost) production module. The aim of this is that it will allow students to learn how to manipulate all aspects related to the production and selling of a natural fertilizer like worm compost (vermicompost), and it will enable them to imagine, in the near future, a local source of green work.
2016, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina
– EES Técnica N1 “Jorge Alfredo Maciel”- San Andres de Giles. Students: Antonio Leandro Avila, Joaquín Gobetti, Melody Selene Prieto, Agustina Ariana Retamar
This project sets out the nutrition and health of adolescent students as an environmental issue, and points out the important role of the food sold at the school kiosk as a sphere of action to develop better habits.
2016 Villa Espil, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina
A rural town of just a few inhabitants wants to see butterflies again. Driven by this idea, they proposed to adapt gardens and town squares for butterflies to be able to complete their life cycle.
The proposal supports not only the production of biodiversity, but also aims at the possibility of developing tourism around these small insects and the beautiful flora that allows this by creating a huge mural in the town entrance.
2016, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina
– EES Técnica N1 “Jorge Alfredo Maciel”- San Andres de Giles. Students: Pablo Díaz, Mario Miguel Martínez, Juan Gastón Guerrieri, Ignacio Menchaca.
– The B.E.L.U. Project proposes the construction of a prototype designed to transform mechanical energy into electricity.
The aim of this project is to contribute with the environment, raising awareness in the community about clean and healthy energy. It also shows how we combine healthy exercise with concern about energy resources.
2016, WARRNAMBOOL, VIC, Australia
In 2016 Warrnambool Special Development School (WSDS) students Destiny, Zander, Caleb and Caleb placed in the final competition for their proposal Plastic is Drastic. They saw that they could make a bigger difference in the recycling of plastics at their school by putting strategies in place to dispose of ALL plastics in a sustainable way.
In Australia we use around 5 billion plastic bags each year. 150 million of these in up littering our environment harming our waterways and our wildlife (Clean-up Australia Day).
WSDS has always recycled hard plastic, such as plastic bottles and yogurt containers but soft plastics always went to land fill, such as plastic wrap and plastic bags. The students did some research and found there was a local business that collects these ‘soft plastics’ for recycling and re-use.
As a result the school has put the following policies in place indefinitely to help reduce plastic going to landfills and into the environment:
The students believe these are really easy strategies to implement in any school and encourage all schools to follow suit.
2016, KANIVA, VIC, Australia
Remmi and Tavie from Kaniva College placed in the top 10 of all the entries submitted in the Australian competition of Caring for our Watersheds with their proposal about wasting food. They wanted to reduce organic food going to landfill and thought the best way to so in their community would be through education.
Remmi and Tavie discovered that amazingly, the average Australian household wastes up to 345kg of food a year, most of this ending up in landfill. At the same time, when organic food rots in landfill it creates methane, a harmful gas to us and the environment.
They figured if they reached out to their local community via their school classrooms they could directly influence 250 households with the potential to reduce 86,250kg of food going to landfill. This is a huge number and this is just our small community; the project could definitely grow bigger and go into other parts of our catchment.
The idea was to create a fun comic to teach people the facts about wasting food, through the costs both economically and to the environment. This comic was linked into the cooking classes at the school. These were specialized classes teaching students how they can save food from going to landfill by giving them ideas about how to use left overs and create shopping lists so less food goes to waste. Sending this comic home with them after the class ensures the message gets taken home to their families.
In researching her Caring for our Watersheds project, Katelyn discovered a starting fact about her school’s use of dry erase whiteboard markers; “My school goes through approximately 1570 markers within a 10 month period.” That’s 1570 markers going in the trash each year. Given that these markers “are plastic, toxic, and non-recyclable” Katelyn saw the need to make a change to “prevent and lower the amount of chemicals making their way into the Lake Winnipeg watershed.”
2016, KANIVA, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
In 2014 Kaniva College students Louise, Jaden, Duncan and Luke took first place in the final competition for their proposal #KanivaWater. Since then, Louise and Jaden have been working tirelessly to put their idea into action. Their idea consists of providing their town with free, fresh drinking water to reduce the amount of plastic bottles purchased by the local community and visitors.
Kaniva is known as a highway town. Located on route between Melbourne and Adelaide, thousands 
of people pass through Kaniva each day using this small country town as a rest stop. The students saw this as an opportunity to help the community and visitors reduce their impact on the environment by helping them to reduce or even stop buying plastic bottles.
Bottling water produces 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, and it takes 3L of water to produce just 1L of bottled water. Additionally, 2015 figures showed over 40% of litter picked up throughout clean up Australia Day was plastic.
Until now Kaniva had no free potable water in town, so the only option for the community or visitors was to purchase bottled water.To address this issue, a water filter and fountain were installed on already established rainwater tanks at the Purple Starfish on Kaniva’s main street. After numerous tests by community partner GWM Water, Louise and Jaden officially opened the #KanivaWater fountain on November 2nd 2016.
Their project has also been set up to educate people about this important issue and solution via social media, hence the # in the title. You can continue to follow their journey on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter by searching for #KanivaWater.
2016 Grass Valley, California, USA
When Nåah Lifland, of Sierra Academy of Expeditionary Learning, was asked how he could improve his watershed, he immediately thought of Mathis Pond Preserve, an area that students from his school visit to get field experience with water quality sampling.
Nåah proposed to expand stewardship activities at the pond by organizing invasive plant removal efforts. These efforts would allow the native plants to flourish and provide more suitable wildlife habitat in the area. With funding from Nutrien, Nåah was able to purchase tools for the task of removing the invasive species, particularly Himalayan blackberries.
During the 2016/17 school year, 65 students visited the site four times and removed blackberries for four hours on each visit, totaling 1,040 hours of service improving the habitat at Mathis Pond. Future students will also use the tools to continue stewardship of the Preserve.