Manitoba

Rain Garden Brochures

2013 Virden, Manitoba, Canada

Emma Jankovics lives in the Upper Assiniboine River Conservation District which is 4208 square miles and has a population of about 6500 people. The district is located in prairie area where the main sources of water are from rivers, lakes and rain water.

As her contribution to our water system “which sustains all living things,” she proposed a way to better sustain it.

“Water is being filled with the runoff from rain water, which along its path collects various pollutants. All of these pollutants end up in the water we swim in, and shower with, and drink. Which means extra work needs to be done to make the water safe and clean. The runoff also causes erosion which can lead to more major flooding. My idea is a small step in the right direction that can help the environment and the local people.

I want to improve the watershed I live in by producing informational brochures educating the community on the benefits of a rain garden to the watershed, and to their homes.”

“Compost!”

2013 Hamiota, Manitoba, Canada

Gage, Brady, and Cody, students at Hamiota Collegiate, discovered that most of what’s in their school garbage can actually be composted.

These students proposed purchasing an outdoor composter for their school, noting that education is an important part of the process; a school-wide promotion plan was part of their proposal. “This way if the students know all of the things that would normally go into the garbage at the school now they would be composted and put back in to the environment.” The environmental benefits of composting are numerous, but for these students reducing garbage is key:”this would help the environment because the items would decompose faster n the compost than they would in the landfills.”

Thanks to contribution from Nutrien, Hamiota Collegiate now has an outdoor composter and a school-wide compost program! along with the compost program they have decided that they want to plant and maintain a garden on school property throughout the summer months and into the fall so they can benefit from the nutrient rich composted material.

Project Bottle (2012)

2013 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Dag Sinclair and Jason Quinn saw an opportunity for their school to use less plastic bottles. They proposed that all 700 students at their school receive a re-usable metal water bottle. These water bottles were a perfect complement to the school’s new spigot-style water fountains that another student won for their school two years ago.

Dag and Jason shared the following water bottle statistics, from the website Green Upgrader: “Plastic water bottles take over 700 years to begin composting; 90 of the cost of a bottled water is the bottle itself; 80% of plastic water bottles are not recycled; 38,000,000 plastic bottles go to the dump per year in America from bottled water; 24,000,000 gallons of oil are needed to produce 1,000,000 plastic bottles; the average American consumes 167 bottles of water a year.” With that in mind, they felt it was important to “use personal metal water bottles that can be refilled and reused for long periods of time to reduce the use of plastic water bottles and reduce the effects of plastic water bottles and their contents on people and the environment.”

Thanks to a contribution from Nutrien, the school was able to provide a re-usable water bottle for every student. even better, Dag and Jason were able to talk to their principal to make sure that next year’s new grade nine students will receive a water bottle too!

“The goal is to provide the students with metal water bottles that will be paid for from the money granted from the contest this year and the following years in the students fees.”

Automatic Taps

2013 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Tory Okemow and Dwight Kennedy noticed that their school used a lot of water as a result of taps left carelessly on in the bathrooms. They proposed that automatic taps would use less water and would be cleaner, safer, and more environmentally friendly than regular taps.

These students also live on school residence, and noted even more wasted water: “the Student Lodge does waste a lot of water all year round with students leaving the water on when brushing teeth.” The benefits of automatic taps include being “easy to operate; stopping the spread of germs and bacteria; preventing water overflow; preventing scalding; and saving water and money.”

An automatic tap was installed in one of the bathrooms at Southeast Collegiate, thanks to Nutrien. The students hope to monitor the difference between the automatic tap and regular taps at the school to demonstrate the need to change all of the taps in the school and at the residence.

Toilet Buddy Town

2013 Manitou, Manitoba, Canada

Lenina Howatt from Nellie McClung Collegiate wanted to propose a simple solution to help conserve water.

“Every litre of this resource is incredibly precious to our environment, especially due to its scarcity. As soon as humans intervene, extracting water from its natural watershed, nature’s course is interrupted. The water is chemically processed and treated, “contaminated” with human use, and further treated again. This drawn out and lengthy process is energy inefficient and costly! But, we can reduce our impact on our watersheds and their natural cycles, further preserving them and all their benefits (filter/buffer water, provide drought/flood stability and “bounce back” capability, maintain biodiversity, promote primary productivity, support wildlife, and erosion and sedimentation control) by simply doing one thing… CONSERVING water!”

She suggested something inexpensive, easy-to-install called “Toilet Buddies”. “Toilet Buddies are plastic, water-filled bags that hang inside your toilet tank, displacing water and saving you the liter capacity of the bag each time you flush!”

Her goal was to distribute toilet buddies to each household in her community and thanks to an $800 contribution by Nutrien, this proposal became a reality.

“My goal for this is to make my town more water-wise and to locally pave a water conscious path for the future!”

Upgrading Restrooms in My School

2012 Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

Dean Webber from Lord Selkirk Regional High school proposed to reduce water use at the school by installing water sensors in the washrooms.

“Using automatic taps decreases water usage by up to 1.7 liters per use. If less water is used by the school then less pollution will be emitted into the environment by cleaning and heating the water.”

The water taps have now been installed in the bathrooms at Lord Selkirk. The school has also purchased 4 more taps so that the main bathrooms all have water saving automatic taps. The Caring for Watersheds taps sponsored by Nutrien (at a cost of $1,200) started the ball rolling on the implementation of water saving devices within the washrooms in our school. “The students have been really respectful of these new taps and there have been several positive articles written about them in the school newspaper” states Angela Bajt, educator at the school.

Recycling Campaign

2012 Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

Maddison Wolf from Lord Selkirk Regional High school observed problems with recycling at her school; the bins were often overflowing onto the floor. She spoke to the janitorial staff found out the system in place could not handle the volume of recyclables from the school. “I did a poll of some of my peers, which revealed they were less likely to recycle when there was recycling piled onto the floor around the full bins”. At $70, she proposed a simple solution of purchasing additional bins for the school at key locations.

“We placed the recycling bins in 2 locations next to the Pepsi drink machines. Before this the plastic drink bottles were just thrown into the garbage cans located close by. We had to empty the small bin two times week and the large bin every week. The students in the resource area were responsible for emptying the bins. This has saved a lot of bottles from entering the landfill.”

The Learning Garden Project

2012 Gimli, Manitoba, Canada

Cheyenne Svenson, Katelyn MacVicar, Heida Arnbjornson and Emma Wear from Gimli High School live on the shores of Lake Winnipeg and are very conscious of how what happens in the lake is intertwined with the health of their watershed.

This dynamic team proposed to create a garden area by their school to provide produce for their cafeteria and Foods & Nutrition program as well as their local Evergreen Needs community assistance program (which provides assistance to members in many ways, including food hampers).

After months of planning the students at Gimli High School were very exciting to start the construction of their school’s Learning Garden. Along with Nutrien’s contribution of $2,000, this garden was made possible by two community organizations: Nutrients for Life and the Manitoba Eco-Network. “The Learning Garden is a great opportunity to engage students with hands on learning opportunities in many different curricular areas. The Learning Garden is a pilot project to teach students the importance of food security issues that are prevalent here and around the world. GHS’s Learning Garden is also being used as an exemplar for other schools in Manitoba to create their own gardens.” says Lisa Pidwinski, project teacher at Gimli High School.

Installing Filtration Systems to School Water Fountains

2012 Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

What don’t the students use the water fountains in Lord Selkirk School? Jason Bzura wanted to investigate the answer. The flavor of the water was one reason, and the second was the inability to fill reusable water bottles. He did a great deal of research on water quality but in the end, a simple water filter to improve the flavor and a filling station was the answer.

He asked the students and they agreed if this would exist in their school they would reduce if not eliminate their purchase of water bottles.
Nutrien contributed $1,000 to this project.

“The water bottle filling station is almost up and running. It has been installed but we are waiting on one part that was damaged in order for it to work. The students are constantly stopping by it and try to fill up their water bottles. We had to put a “coming soon” sign on it. I am sure that once it is in working order then several plastic water bottles will be diverted from the landfill.”

Partnered and Prepared

2012 Crystal City, Manitoba, Canada

Jayden Dobson and Daria Hildebrand from Thomas Greenway Middle School proposed a project focused on partnership and education. They wanted to improve and maintain drinking water quality throughout the Pembina River Watershed by educating their community as they felt clean water is too often taken for granted. “People need to be educated on water issues in order to learn their part in being responsible as they learn to respect water”.
Their proposal was to create simple but effective signs identifying locations that are key drinking water areas while educating citizens about protecting our essential resource. The solution was achievable only if this duo could find the right partners within the community; and they did.

This project became a reality with parterships with the Pembina Valley Conservation District, the town of Pilot Mound, as well as Ducks Unlimited Canada. Nutrien provided $400 for the purchase of the sign and the Conservation District provided the installation.