Colorado

Bees: Small but Mighty

2016 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Bees provide up to 1/3 of our diet, which may seem small, but includes a variety of foods such as: fruits, vegetables, grains, and even meat. Kendra’s proposal was to plant gardens with bee-friendly flowers in the community to help these small workers.

By planting these gardens, bees are offered a constant source of nutrients and a healthy habitat that uses no harmful chemicals on the plants. The implementation plan was fairly simple, and included buying the supplies, finding locations, setting up gardens, and planting flowers and plants. “It is easy and anyone can do it.” States Kendra. “The smallest effort can make a huge difference.”

Timeline and Budget:

February 29, 2016 – Figured out location for project and contacted beekeeper Debbie Moors
March 1, 2016 – Brought home donated tires for gardens ($0)
March 31, 2016 – Shopped for garden beds and soil at Home Depot with Susan Payne ($360)
April 28, 2016 – Shopped for plants at Home Depot with Susan Payne ($330)
May 7, 2016- Set up multiple recycled tire gardens around the community
May 8, 2016 – Set up gardens ($0)

Aeration Conservation

2016 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Aeration Conservation is an important way and also a very overlooked way to care for our watersheds. This proposal was to simply install numerous aerators on select faucets at my school, Greeley Central High School. Installing low-flow aerators on faucets will help contribute to water conservation and limit our anthropogenic unsustainable ecological practices. Practices that have degraded, polluted, and thrown us above our present carrying capacity on Earth. Implementation for this project was very simple and can be replicated easily throughout the world.

Timeline and Budget:

February 10, 2016 Contact Ana Gonzalez @ Chicago Faucets
April 27, 2016 Contact Charles Muller @ Parks Supply of America
May 2, 2016 Ordered faucet aerators through Susan Payne @ Poudre Learning Center (x25)($24)

Budget: $1,000
Project Cost: $600

Stripping My Way to a Cleaner Watershed

2016 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Dustin’s initial proposal did not make it to the final 10. However, Dustin believed he had a quality idea to improve his watershed. He raised the money and implemented the project on his own. He was awarded the 2015-2016 Environmental Action Award and $200.

Dustin is a sophomore this year at Greeley Central High school. Dustin’s idea was built around helping to reduce the Carbon Footprint of our school by supplying every teacher’s desk a power strip mounted with Velcro. This allows teachers easy access to the switch so that they can disconnect their energy vampires every night. He purchased the power strips using grant money that the Environmental club, the Green Cats, had received from Wal-Mart for a digital energy information kiosk. He then organized a group of students who went to all 80 classrooms after school and mounted power strips inconvenient locations for the teachers. This was followed by a school wide power down day in which we were able to see in real time how much less energy we were using through a website called PowerTakeOff. The district had set this up for a handful of schools to monitor their power usage. Everyone was involved in this power down day from the custodial staff to the kitchen to the administration. Dustin was instrumental in making this happen. He even put together 80 bags of treats and passed them out to classrooms that were reducing their energy use! This took a huge amount of organization and people managing skills to accomplish! Dustin showed great maturity and leadership throughout this process. If a school can cut down their electrical usage it can reduce the production of harmful particulates in our air and our water.

Lights On Lights Off

2015 Berthoud, Colorado, USA

The students of Berthoud High School noticed that lights in the school are left on all the time – even if there is no one inside the room. They wanted to make a difference, so the students installed motion-triggered light switches in bathrooms around the school. The lights go on when a person enters the bathroom and after 5 minutes the lights turn off. This helps the school to save money and electricity; reducing their environmental impact by using less fossil fuels, and allowing the school to use the additional funds for other important items around the school and community.

Since implementing the new light system, the lights in the bathrooms have been off 25% more than before! The motion sensored light switch may be a small-scale project but it is a great start for saving energy and reducing associated costs. Buildings around the world could easily implement the same project, but on an even bigger scale.

Becoming environmentally friendly can benefit everyone!

Beautiful Bee Box

2015 Berthoud, Colorado, USA

This duo has installed a pair of Italian honey bee hives near the foothills of Loveland. The reason they chose to implement this idea is to do with both the declining population of the honey bee as well as the recent flooding that has occurred in the Thompson River watershed. Due to the fact that honey bees are responsible for over 80% of vegetation pollination they essentially allow plants to produce and spread faster, thus helping ensure that growth occurs where it was washed near the river. This will prevent the amount of soil erosion around rivers and help keep the water cleaner.
The benefit to raising the bee population in North America, specifically the Midwest, is to ensure a greener landscape with more vegetation, assisting in cleaning both the air as well as the water in the Little Thompson watershed. A large amount of vegetation around a body of water prevents the amount of soil erosion entering the body of water, and keeps the water cleaner.

Beautiful Gardens of Hope

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This project is a simple rain garden. Rain gardens are mostly used for decoration, but are very beneficial to the environment. These gardens are between 6-10 inches deep and can be built to any size. The purpose of this garden is to prevent flooding of a certain area, as the gardens hold a lot of water that would otherwise flood the area, and in turn also keeps excess nutrients in soils from entering waterways. One great benefit is these rain gardens aren’t machines or mechanical systems so you enjoy the gorgeous view of the garden without knowing its true purpose.
Rain gardens are built for many reasons and have many benefits. They are made to be pretty and enjoyable, but also reduce local flooding, conserve water, increase water quality in waterways and increase water quantity in waterways.

Misdeed of the Microbead

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Your everyday products such as toothpastes, facial cleansers, and body washes have little pieces of plastic called polyethylene beads which are more commonly known as microbeads. So, what’s the big deal? Well these little microbeads are so small in diameter that they aren’t picked up in filters, and end up in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Ultimately, they line the bottoms of water bodies, killing and harming fish and other species along the way. The best way to end this is through education and knowledge; if people actually knew of the harmful effects, they would seek a more natural alternative.
Education can be a small scale implementation but can quickly become a larger scale. Through social media we can support banning of microbeads, plus having anyone switch to an alternative could help on an individual by individual basis; every person that switches will make a difference. Just think, only one of Neutrogena’s “Deep Clean” contains thirty-six hundred thousand microbeads – one less tube in our water system would make a difference.

Watershed Education

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Children are the future; therefore it’s important for them to have proper knowledge about our world to make it a better place.

To increase awareness, students launched a 4 week program into Mrs.DeLacruz’s fourth grade classroom, focusing on water conservation, energy, and the environment. This program included fun activities like planting trees, water cycle memory games, and the 4th grade students even raced solar powered toy cars made of recycled materials!

The elementary students are now knowledgeable about ways to help their local watershed by conserving water and energy. By focusing efforts into one classroom, each student now has a good understanding of a watershed. This will hopefully lead to a positive ripple effect, and the students sharing their learnings with their families and friends.

Shotgun Shell Recycling

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This proposal was to educate the community about the dangers of leaving shotgun shells and other gun casings on the ground after hunting, and also the benefits of recycling the brass from the shells. To implement this project, the students provided informational pamphlets at various hunting stores within our watershed, such as Garretson’s and Sportsman’s Warehouse. Within the pamphlets there is information about the environmental dangers of leaving the shells and casings, the perks of proper disposal, and how to remove the brass from the plastic of shotgun shells. Not only do the pamphlets aim to give information about the perks of proper disposal, but also let people know that places within our Watershed will accept the brass and will even pay for it.
The environmental benefits of educating the community about the proper disposal of shotgun shells and other gun casings are having cleaner hunting grounds; the wildlife within the grounds will not be negatively impacted by the metal residue, and groundwater will be cleaner from the reduction of metal pollutants from shotgun shells and casings.

Environmentally Friendly Household Cleaners

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This project was to create and distribute an environmentally friendly household cleaner. The goal was to get families to replace cleaners that contain harmful chemicals with ones that will not hurt the environment. The students made a recipe out of vinegar, Borax and water. The recipe was included on the bottle and in the brochure, so people could continue to make it on their own. Once the substance was created, the students passed their product out to families at the school’s spring parent-teacher conferences. They contacted the recipients of their product and asked them about their experience with the product to gain feedback as well.
The cleaner could potentially cut down on the amount chemicals used by each family that receives and switches to the students’ product. This in turn cuts down on the overall amount of chemicals polluting the water in our watershed and decreases Eutrophication, which saves local plant and animal life. The students were able to produce the project on a very small scale using only families at the school, but even then one hundred bottles were distributed. The focus of the project is to help people understand that they do not need to use products with chemicals and that they can make safer, cheaper options on their own; they will hopefully also tell their friends and family about this causing a ripple effect; the more people there are who know about it, the more people there are who will choose to make it on their own.