Colorado

Using Bats to Stop Bugging the Poudre

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

In order to reduce the use of pesticides in their city this team sought to put up bat houses around the Poudre Learning Center area. They discovered the Greeley parks and recreation department spends $50,000 annually on pesticides alone. Strategically, the main focus of the project is to reduce the amount of pesticide sprayed around Greeley. By hosting bats such as the Brazilian free-tailed bat, little brown bat, and the Canyon bat who all share a common appetite for mosquitoes, the population of mosquitoes will go down naturally. Mosquitoes can carry and spread diseases which factors greatly into why the city puts so much into controlling the population of the mosquitoes. However, the chemicals in pesticides have negative consequences such as affecting human health if ingested and the health of the entire watershed. To best reduce the use of pesticides the students wanted to show that it is best to work with nature to control the mosquito population and prevent chemical compounds from getting into the water. By raising awareness and showing the city bats can help control the mosquito population, the students hope that the use of pesticides will go down. It is crucial to protect our local watersheds for not only ourselves, but the generations to follow.
Eventually the mosquito population in the summer will rise, but the bat homes around the Poudre River will host the bats that feed on mosquitoes. Instead of using $50,000 worth of pesticides Greeley can decrease the amount of sprayed pesticides. The surrounding environment will benefit greatly especially the watershed because significantly fewer chemicals run into the water. Fewer chemicals equal healthier aquatic biomes and species – including humans – which survive on the Poudre watershed.

Quitting the Bottle

2015 Berthoud, Colorado, USA

On average Berthoud High School uses 15,000 water bottles a year. This is a huge waste of plastic. These students’ felt that as a high school, they could take the lead and be a role-model for the community by getting rid of plastic water bottles. Their proposition to reduce the amount of litter in their local watershed was to install a water bottle refill station in Berthoud High School. With this new refill station, students and staff are able bring in their own water bottles and refill them with clean, filtered water throughout the day in order to reduce the amount of plastic water bottles that they buy as an alternative. These bottles are often thrown away instead of recycled, meaning they end up in landfills, and thus pollute the watershed.

Before the water bottle refill station was installed, the school was selling up to 300 plastic bottles of water per day. Many of these bottles ended up in the trash bins rather than being recycled. With the new refill station, the students’ hope that water bottle sales will be a fraction of what they were in the past because more people will be choosing the reusable option. If all of the schools in the district installed these refill station, it would keep a monumental amount of plastic out of landfills and out of watersheds.

Gusto-Matic 5280-X

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This project consists of a foot-powered hand dryer that uses no resources and saves tons of resources. To combat the major problem of paper waste and the electricity used as an alternative, this students’ proposal was to create a foot powered-hand dryer. This foot powered hand dryer will create no emissions from electricity generation and will have no paper waste from thrown away paper towels. The only energy consumed: calories. Only waste created: heat. If the hand dryer is installed in one bathroom, it can save 13.5 trees worth of paper towels, and 810 lbs. of coal in electricity generation over the course of one school year. The GUSTO-MATIC 5280-X has many environmental benefits. The immediate benefits include no paper waste, and no electricity consumption. This has many secondary effects, like no deforestation for the paper towels, no need to make more room in the land fill or take out the trash every day, no water pollution, no energy consumption from power plants, meaning no air pollution from the power plants.

Water Bottle Filling Station

Bottled water is becoming an increasingly popular choice among many students today. However, the these recyclable water bottles end up in landfills more often than not.

Ivonne Morales, a Greely Central High School student in Greeley, Colorado, noticed this trend and realized he must do something about it. Working with Liz Mock-Murphy, her teacher/mentor, she installed five water bottle filling stations in her school and encourages students to use reusable bottles.
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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.

Solar Power Energy

2012 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Katie Ainslie at Greeley High School placed 1^st in 2012.

The aim for her solution of using solar powered energy is to decrease and eventually diminish the use of coal powered energy leaving our watershed free of pollutants. Starting by lowering the demand for these fossil fuels in Greeley schools, Katie wanted to cause a ripple effect throughout the Cache La Poudre Watershed.

Two major benefits come from this alternative energy resource. First, the school will save a substantial amount on their energy bill. More importantly, they are protecting their local watershed from harmful emissions caused by coal power, thus saving a limited resource and producing cleaner energy.

With the demand for a renewable and sustainable energy source, solar energy has become a great resource that is not only available to Katie’s school but to all schools in our watershed.

This project started out as a no-cost project for the school district, but they have agreed to make this a pilot study for a possible city wide solar garden. The solar panels are leased rather than owned, and installation and maintenance will be completed by a solar company.

Negotiations are proceeding with several Colorado solar firms for panel construction at the Poudre Learning Center. Installation could not happen at Central High School so the PLC was suggested as a second site. School District 6 will help cover a portion of the construction cost.

The schedule for installation of the panels will be in 2013 when the local electric power company, Excel is able to finance a rebate for a portion of the solar panels to meet their solar energy requirement. When the solar panels are installed they will be put on a 20 year Power Purchase Agreement which will buy energy from the solar company’s panels at the PLC. The energy purchased will be 15- 25% less than our current energy bill.

Katie says, ” I really appreciate working with my mentor, Kim Frick, the PLC and CFW staffs, along with the incredible support (over $2,000) from Nutrien to make this solution a reality.”

Soil Microbial Health – The Affect of Soil Amendments on Soil Respiration

2012 Loveland, Colorado, USA

Benjamin Hoyer from Resurrection Christian High School explains that Aldo Leopold said in Sand County Almanac: “What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism.” Hoyer’s solution was to develop a soils lab module which allows students to connect to their land and water and to further student conservation education. The lab module includes information on soil characteristics, a soils analysis lab, and age appropriate supplemental readings.

“By developing and distributing this lab module students will have the opportunity to become stewards, engaging as citizens in their watershed and building an understanding for their soil.”
-Ben Hoyer

The student module and materials were completed and delivered to the Poudre Learning Center (PLC) for teachers to use during the school school year. The PLC staff said that they had over 14,000 students visit them last year. Hoyer’s hope is that the teachers will consider using the module with their students.

Waste Not, Wash a Lot

2012 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Amanda Cary, Anna Harkabus, and Alexis Gerk Cindy Keesis, AP Environmental Science Instructor MaryAnn Murphy, Mentor, Poudre Learning Center.

Their solution to the huge Styrofoam problem is to replace the toxic Styrofoam plates that are used at the school each day for lunch with plastic trays that can be used over and over again. The reusable plates will be washed each day in a sanitation system already located in the school’s kitchen. Although additional water use is necessary for the implementation of the project, such adverse environmental impact is minor compared to the effects of polystyrene plates.

Helmut Sihler once said that, “The environment is too important to be left to the environmentalists.”

“We are excited that each and every student at Northridge will be able to take a step toward protecting our watershed.” States Lexi Gerk.

Working the Nutrition Leaders in the cafeteria, the students’ ordered 500 reusable trays. They also ordered tray racks to hold the trays in the washing process.

The total cost of the implementation is $3236.32 to purchase the trays and the racks. Thank you to Nutrien and the school district for helping fund this project.

Waste Wise

2012 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Lila Dong and Faith Sears, sophomores, won eighth place in 2012 Caring for our Watersheds (CFW) Colorado competition finals. Afterwards, Nutrien donated $1,000 to implement their idea.

Dong and Sears had the idea to implement a composting program at their high school. Although the original proposal had to be altered before the finals, the idea re-implemented a program in the high school that had previously been benefiting the environment and community through food waste recycling. The original program had to be cancelled when the composting company closed. In time for the CFW finals, Dong and Sears had already made contact with a long established composting company, and secured support from the school administration and student body for the composting program.

Dong and Sears is working with A1 Organics, a well-established composting company in Colorado along with Nutrien and its’ community partners.

A1 Organics has provided a composting bin for Union Colony Schools, in which middle and high schoolers will recycle their food waste. Biweekly, the company will pick up the compost. This program will be in place for the entirety of the 2012-2013 school year. It will be completed in May 2013; however, through the terra-cycling program at Union Colony, it is hopeful that the composting program will continue to have funding for the following years.

Dong has commented on the project, “Composting allows us to use specific things such as food that will help the watershed and even nature by giving nutrients for plants instead of just wasting it by throwing it away in the trash.”

Hand Sanitizer and our Watershed

2012 Greeley, Colorado, USA

The students’ originally proposed to replace the soap dispensers in every bathroom with a dispenser of hand sanitizer, which would save time, trees, and reduce water consumption. By using hand sanitizer the students at the school would be saving paper towels, soap, and money. During the implementation of the proposal the students’ discovered recent research that suggests that the manufacturers of hand sanitizers claim that the sanitizers kill 99.9 percent of germs and this may not actually be the case. The students’ also found that the Food and Drug Administration recommends that hand sanitizers not be used in place of soap and water but only as an adjunct. It also recommends that to properly sanitize the hands, soap and water should be used; a hand sanitizer cannot and should not take the place of proper cleansing procedures with soap and water.

Based on their research, the students’ changed their search to finding a hospital-grade hand sanitizer that is triclosan-free (which has been found to alter hormone regulation in lab animals or cause antibiotic resistance). So, instead of replacing soap in the restrooms they are now placing the triclosan-free, hospital-grade hand sanitizer in the cafeteria at the head of the food line. At that point students will be able to enter the food area with germ-free hands. This means that the installed bio-based hand sanitizer will contribute not only to a cleaner and more economical school site, but also a more environmentally safe school for our students. Thanks to Nutrien for their donation of $698.00 to implement our solution.

“By keeping the chemicals out of our watershed we not only help our own area but all of those downstream of us.” Mayra & Sam