Author Archives: Chloe Sprecker

Cleaning Garcia Bend

2016 Sacramento, California, USA

Garcia Bend Park is a neighborhood park on the banks of the Sacramento River. Trash and debris left here by visitors or illegally dumped here continues to be an ongoing issue. Unfortunately, most of that trash ends up directly entering the adjacent waters, and directly or indirectly harming aquatic wildlife. Alexa Smith and Priscilla Dawson wanted to practice good stewardship of their watershed and encourage others to do the same. Alexa, who has been involved in clean-ups before, understood how eye-opening clean-ups can be; seeing all the accumulated debris directly can make students think twice before littering themselves and inspire them to take action. Priscilla and Alexa organized a group from The MET Sacramento to return to this area. In one morning, they collected 11 bags of trash from the park! Students enjoyed being outdoors while doing something good for their community and the watershed.

Southside Park Clean Up

2016 Sacramento, California, USA

For this year’s Caring for Our Watershed project, Molly Crofoot and Miana Muscat of The MET Sacramento focused on a park/pond area adjacent to their school. Their goal was to build on the success of past clean-up efforts, and organize more volunteers to thoroughly cover a greater area than previous efforts. The duo also expressed the possibility of building an annual, if not bi-annual tradition of involving their classmates as stewards of this park, as it is so close to their campus. To that end, Molly and Miana recruited approximately 30 volunteers to help with their clean-up event at Southside Park. Because they had so many volunteers, they split into groups for litter pick-up as well as invasive species removal. Molly and her classmates reported having a fun day in the field, and getting a lot accomplished. This clean-up was completed with perfect timing, as it was just before the Earth Day celebration was to be held at the park.

Bat Boxes at Del Paso Park

2016 Sacramento, California, USA

In his Caring for Our Watersheds proposal, Ryan Kizer explained that building and installing bat boxes in a local park would not only provide habitat for bats to expand their population, but would also help to create natural control of pests, especially mosquitoes. This natural pest control would reduce the need for use of pesticides, which can be costly and may have negative effects on the environment, wildlife, and/or human health. With project funding from Nutrien, Ryan constructed 4 bat boxes. After he painted the boxes and put asphalt shingles on the roof areas, he mounted them on poles in 2 different areas of Del Paso Park. In the next few years, bats will move into the safe environment of the boxes. These bats will also provide natural pest control to the area, as well as a cool show for visitors as they exit the box at dusk to feed!

Crayola Colour Cycle!

2016, Trenton, Ontario, Canada

Marker Recycling Student Action Project Ontario

In 2016, a student named Melissa from Murray Centennial Public School proposed an idea of the “Crayola Colour Cycle” that will help to improve the waste management at her school. Melissa will educate the school on her project before she begins. She will also be holding a colouring contest for primary grades the winner gets a Crayola t-shirt, and handing out stickers to the other classes that say “I recycle” on them.

She did the“Crayola Colour Cycle” project throughout her school where she got all the students and staff to bring in markers, pens and highlighters that they have at school or at home. Once they brought them in they would be collected, then later shipped back to Crayola where they will be recycled properly through a company called JBI. They specialize in recycling dense plastics. This project was implemented in November 2016, with the help of her school.

This project is going to help reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfills as well as the amount of energy needed to make brand new products for the future.

Revitalizing Rice Lake

2016, Alderville, Ontario Canada

In 2016, Gezhii, a grade eight student at Roseneath Centennial Public School proposed the idea to revitalize a creek, placing 2^nd overall. The creek is located in Roseneath Ontario. Sandercock Creek that is in a decline, due to the agricultural fields that have a lot of nutrient runoff, and negatively impact the health of the creek, which then flows directly into Rice Lake.

Revitalizing Rice Lake Student Action Ontario

Gezhii suggested the idea of having volunteers come out for a day to help plant different native trees and herbaceous plants on either side of the shoreline in order to help rejuvenate the creek. These plants along the sides of the creek are key to the health of critters that call this water home. As a result planting this shoreline buffer will help to decrease erosion and aid in filtering water.

Implementation has begun in 2018, a small group of grade six and seven’s from Roseneath Centennial Public School came to participate in a planting day on June 7, 2018. These students planted eighty-five trees and herbaceous plants along the shoreline of the creek.

Gezhii hopes that revitalizing this portion of the Sandercock creek will do a small part in improving aquatic life and increase water quality.

Riperian Restoration

2016 Berthoud, Colorado, USA

Emily’s proposal was to repair a section of the damaged riparian zone (the river bank) of the Big Thompson River by planting grass seeds to promote a healthier river.
In 2013, one of the biggest floods in Colorado history occurred. This flood not only destroyed many homes and businesses, but also changed the course of the river and took out a multitude of trees, grasses, and shrubs in the riparian zone. Without this vegetation, an excess of sediment can run into the river, and a number of unwanted problems can result from this. For example, the depth of the river decreases which increases the temperature of the water. An increase in temperature can decrease the amount of fish and other macroinvertebrates that are able to live there, and therefore decreasing the amount of biodiversity in the river. Replenishing the vegetation will help to prevent future flood damage and maintain the health of the river. Emily’s solution for these problems was to gather volunteers and plant seeds and a variety of plants along a highly damaged stretch of the river bank.

Timeline and Budget:

Feb. 2016- End of March: Multiple correspondents/ conversations with Wildlands Restoration Volunteers in order to join forces in a project they had already begun.
March 2016: Hung flyers and spread word about the project in order to gather volunteers. Budget of $10.
April 2nd: Planted native grasses along a 1 mile stretch of the Lower North Fork of the Big Thompson. Total cost was $3,338. Caring for Our Watersheds contributed $800.

Of Gardens and Guys

2016 Greeley, Colorado, USA

J.C. Arco decided it would be a good idea to plant rain gardens in some of the public schools in the area to reduce water pollution and to help educate kids in caring for our watershed (killing two birds with one garden). The project plan is a local project, but with hope that it will encourage people to share what they’ve learned with others in the future. The targeted group is kids between grades 5-8, as they are still young enough that they are open to new ideas, easily influenced, but old enough that they can understand the reason for the project.

Timeline and Budget
In order to implement the project, J.C. called teachers at various local schools and scheduled meetings with them to explain his proposal. He met with Dos Rios Elementary School and planted the garden. Rain gardens are relatively inexpensive compared to some other projects averaging at about $100 per garden, depending on the types of seed and soil that is used.

No More Trash Talking

2016 Berthoud, Colorado, USA

This proposal focuses on the overall aesthetic and practical appeal of trash cans. In order to reduce the amount of trash around the school, the students decided to take large trash cans, modify them to make throwing trash away easier, and paint creative designs on them to make people want to throw their trash where it belongs.

The aim is that having eye-catching trash cans in an obvious area will decrease the amount of litter around. Since litter can be washed into rivers and lakes, it creates many problems by polluting the water, and also potentially to harming marine animals as well. For example, the green-way through Colorado Springs was recently lined with trash after high water levels. Wildlife is directly affected by these types polluting plastics making their way into the animals’ habitat.

Timeline and Budget:

March 1, 2016- Received trash cans, trash bags, clamps, bolts, washers, locks, and nuts from Home Depot (Total= $754.17)
March 4, 2016- Started contest at school for students to paint the trash cans
March 13, 2016- Modified trash cans by cutting holes in the sides to make throwing trash away easier
March 29, 2016- Received paint from Larimer County Landfill’s Drop & Swap
April 22, 2016- Painted and decorated trash cans
April 29, 2016- Created infomercial video
May 2, 2016 – Modified trash cans by adding touch ups and clamps for the trash bags

Hazardous Households: Is Yours One?

2016 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This project focused on raising awareness around the community, and collection of household hazardous waste. This small scale collection took place through battery drives, and the establishment of long term battery collection to further spread awareness over the next several years.

Timeline and Budget

February 15 – April 29, 2016: Informative Posters in School ($57.13)
February 24, 2016: Parent Teacher Conferences,-Passed out flyers and had display board ($46.47)
February 29 – March 4, 2016: School Battery Drive ($44.85)
March 9, 2016: Pizza Party for Drive Winning Class ($29.48,)
March 9,2016: Pizza Donated by Domino’s Pizza ($0, Saved $60 in Pizza Party)
April 21, 2016: Interview with Cracker Barrel ($0)
April 23 – April 30, 2016: Local Battery Drive, paper bags donated by King Soopers ($0)
April 25 – May 1, 2016: Reached out to district schools ($0)

Electric Hand Dryers and Waste Management

2016 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Hundreds of rolls paper towels are wasted in schools all over Colorado – sitting in landfills when they are not recycled. Students at Northridge High school decided to do something about it. First, they compared the waste of paper towels without the option using of an electric hand dryer, and with the option of using an electric hand dryer for two weeks each. After comparison, the students found that adding the hand dryers reduced the use of paper towels by 3 rolls for the first 11 days; lowering the waste of paper towels by 20% in less than 2 weeks! Knowing that the school is used nearly 47 weeks per year, that’s 90 rolls of paper a year saved by only 2 hand dryers.

Timeline and Budget

March 10, 2016 Meeting with Mr. Hand; figuring out best ways to install electric hand dryers in restroom
March 15, 2016 Electric hand dryers ordered (2 for $410 each)
March 22, 2016 Electric hand dryers’ arrival at Poudre Learning Center
April 6, 2016 Electric Hand dryers installed at Northridge (estimation was $600)
April 2016 Start of collecting data
April 30, 2016 End of collecting data.
May 1, 2016 Analyze data and start of presentation and poster