Manitoba

Bottled Up

2014 Landmark, Manitoba, Canada

Trevor, Cole, Jaxon, and Andrew wanted their school to use less plastic water bottles. They also saw the refill stations as a way to reduce water use. They proposed faucet refill water stations to encourage students to refill their own bottles.

“We did an experiment to see how much water we will waste from drinking from a fountain. We squirted water from the fountain into a cup for three seconds and marked the cup, and then we timed someone drinking and got the spilled water in a cup and marked it. By comparing the lines we discovered that 66% (2/3) of the water dispensed goes down the drain.”

Thanks to Nutrien, the school now has a new drinking fountain with a sensor so that no more drinking water goes down the drain!

Allowing Children to Learn and Experience Nature

2014 Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

Maria Bunk wants children to connect with nature. “Keeping good care of our watershed and environment is very important because there is not much fresh drinking water left which means we need to learn to respect and care for our fragile mother nature in a more responsible way.”

Maria proposed an environmental education program for her school’s nursery school that includes an activity book that she created; an in-class aquarium for children to learn about water as habitat; seeds to plant to learn about how things grow; and a watershed model the class will create from clay. Using this model, the nursery school students will learn about pollution and get to experiment with how water moves through their watershed.

“I think that eduating young children is a great benefit because it will create a ripple effect. Children enjoy sharing their knowledge with others which means the message will be passed on to a bigger scheme of people!”

Green Learning

2014 Lockport, Manitoba, Canada

According to Kailey Evans children need to spend more time outside. As a result of spending less time outside, “children aren’t thinking about the environment or how to take proper care of their watershed.” She suggested creating an outdoor pond for students to do experiments, dip for water bugs, and learn more about water.

Kailey saw the perfect fit at a nearby school, where an outdoor classroom was already in place. This special classroom means a lot to Kailey: “When I was in grade seven at Lockport, this outdoor classroom had just started. The pond had been dug out, but it was never able to retain water so we could never use this pond to its full potential.”

Thanks to a generous contribution from Nutrien, the dugout is now a pond, and students are already dipping for bugs! As Kailey has pointed out: “Environmental education provides the capability and skills over time to analyze environmental issues, engage in problem solving, and take action to sustain and improve the environment.”

Don’t Flush Those Meds!

2014 Gimli, Manitoba, Canada

When Hailey and Ruby discovered that traces of pharmaceuticals were being found in Canada’s lakes, they decided to take action. The pair surveyed family and friends and found that most people don’t know how or where to dispose of pharmaceuticals.

“According to the article Pharmaceuticals in Our Water: A New Threat to Public Health, tests on water in North America have found trace amounts of antibiotics, painkillers, anti-inflammatories, hormones, tranquilizers, chemotherapy drugs and drugs used to treat epilepsy and blood cholesterol.”

Hailey and Ruby created a brochure with details on how their community could properly dispose of medications, and delivered these brochures to doctors’ and dentists’ offices around Gimli. They also shared the information with the Home Care Co-ordinator and Senior Resource Manager as well as a private home care companies to expand their audience. “By informing people of the possible consequences of flushing meds on our watershed, we are confident that people will want to do the right thing. After all, we all want a healthy lake and watershed”

Planting Trees to Sequester Carbon

2014 Virden, Manitoba, Canada

Logan Biccum and Natalie Vachon wanted to “create a better environment for their watershed.” The students proposed planting trees at a local park, “a simple but obvious solution that will greatly benefit the environment.”

Along with their classmates, Logan and Natalie planted 92 trees along Scallion Creek at the school’s Learning Garden site. Working with the Upper Assiniboine Conservation District, the team chose a site where tree planting would “greatly benefit the soil erosion and wildlife habitat.” Trees are an extremely important part of a watershed. Among the benefits of trees: “Trees reduce greenhouse effect by shading house and office buildings. This reduces the need for air conditioning, which in turn reduces the amount of fossil fuels burned to produce energy. Tree roots will also eliminate nutrients which are harmful to our water, and by planting trees we can enlarge our wildlife habitat.”

Thanks to a contribution from Nutrien, the support of the Upper Assiniboine Conservation District and the hard work of their classmates, Logan and Natalie discovered that “planting trees will improve our earth in so many ways!”

Cigarette Recycling

2014 Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

“Did you know that 4.5 trillion cigarettes are smoked a year worldwide and it takes 18 months to 10 years for a cigarette butt to decompose?” Alex Klasz noticed that his school had a lot of cigarette butts around the area where people smoke, and when he discovered how harmful these are to the environment, he wanted to make a change.

“Cigarette butts go from the grass and sidewalk to the drain for the street to the river where fish can eat and choke on butts. This means the hazardous chemicals in those cigarettes, such as cadmium, lead, arsenic, and hydrogen cyanide, enter our watershed.”

Alex also learned that cigarette butts can be recycled through a program called TerraCycle, but needed collection containers for his school so that students wouldn’t put their cigarette butts on the ground or in the garbage. Thanks to Nutrien, the school received an outdoor container for cigarette butts. Through the recycling program, the school also receives funds for cigarette waste. Alex plans to use those funds to purchase more containers so that the program continues.

Switching to Eco Friendly Cleaning Products

2014 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

If you can’t pronounce the ingredients in cleaning products, how can you tell if they’re going to be safe? Stacey Amos and Tristan Harper wondered this when they started looking at the types of cleaning products found in schools.

“We need to think about the impact on our water because all of these liquids end up going down the drain. These lead to our waters, and include chemicals such as loramine oxine, myristamine oxide, and styrene. How do we know these are safe for our lakes if we can’t even pronounce it?”

The team proposing switching their school’s cleaning products to eco-friendly versions that don’t contain harmful ingredients. Thanks to Nutrien, they were able to purchase classroom kits of cleaning products and re-usable cloths. This means “safer products and less pollution. Time to get cleaning!”

Water Quality Testing

2014 Peguis First Nation, Manitoba, Canada

In 2013, Lake Winnipeg was named the most threatened lake in the world. For students at Peguis Central School, water quality is an especially important issue. These students live near Lake Winnipeg, and along the Fisher River which feeds into the lake. Kayla and Kelly are learning how nitrates and phosphates could affect the lake.

“Our project is to conduct scientific testing on the Fisher River to see whether it is a significant contributor to algal blooms, which have occurred on Lake Winnipeg.”

This project is part of a multi-year initiative that the school is taking to look at the Fisher River, and determine how it relates to Lake Winnipeg. The goal for these students is to obtain ten-years of data, so they can see if and how the water quality changes over time. Next year, Kelly and Kayla will be mentoring younger students at their school so that the project can carry on once the girls graduate. Thanks to Nutrien, they were able to purchase a new test kit to continue their research!

International Rain Barrel Giveaway

image1-2 Rain barrels are designed to collect water, but one distinctive rain barrel designed by students at Daysland School in central Alberta is garnering just as much attention as it is water.

Butterflies, toads, dragonflies and other flora and fauna help depict a healthy watershed on a rain barrel designed by 20 students from grades five to 12 at Daysland School. It also helped the classroom win $1,000 through an international rain barrel giveaway and art contest sponsored by Nutrien’s Caring for our Watersheds (“CFW”) program.

Save the Stinkin’ Slough

2013 Crystal City, Manitoba, Canada

Austin Hudson from Thomas Greenway Middle School was frustrated with people’s lack of knowledge regarding the importance of keeping our watersheds healthy. more specifically, the fact sloughs and other wetlands were being drained on farmer’s fields when they provide such benefit was something wanted to talk about. As his family relies on farming, he could understand the drive to maximize production, but at what cost?

?My solution to this seemly huge issue is education. I will make a wetland diorama and a PowerPoint, called “Save the Stinkin’ Slough.” These will be sent to local schools to tell the kids about how important wetlands are to a watershed. once the kids have seen the presentation they will be given a small test or feedback sheet to show what they have learned. By doing this you can educate young kids who will tell their parents about the usefulness of wetlands. Hopefully the older generation will start thinking, hey those useless pieces of land are actually useful just the way they are! Then those adults will tell other adults. So by educating young people we can maybe save some of the wetlands in our watershed. it wouldn’t take much to do this idea and I think this project will work by educating people on this serious problem and helping them know how to fix it.”

Austin did develop his PowerPoint and thanks to a $1500 contribution from Nutrien also purchased an “Enviroscape” watershed model which will be circulated throughout his and neighboring community school to help spread the word.

He says that the diorama is “very cool and way better than I expected, all the kids in the school were so excited to see it; they all wanted a demonstration.” This was a bit scary for Austin but when it was over he said “I’m glad I did it, Tabitha was a huge help and I learned lots from the other presentations.? Thanks again for this program and providing this experience to so many kids!