2018, CINCINNATI, OH, USA

Paige and Aliyah carried out their project within Mount Notre Dame High School. They decided to hold a used tennis-shoe drive and work together with Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe Program to help create new playgrounds for kids around the community. With the help of their mentor, they created several posters advertising the details of the shoe drive and hung them up around school. In addition, they also sent out and electronic school-wide post and made an announcement during the school day. They used Chick-fil-A meals as an incentive to get people to participate. Anyone who brought in three or more pairs of tennis shoes was rewarded with a meal of their choice.

The shoe drive immediately got a lot of buzz from the students. With awards like Chick-fil-A and points towards a potential day off school, the girls had no trouble getting people to participate. After only the first day, the juniors had collectively brought in over 30 pairs of shoes and were winning the competition. By the end of the drive, the seniors ended up getting the win with 56 total pairs of shoes.

At the end of each day, Paige and Aliyah counted up the shoes in the bins, recorded the amount, and loaded the shoes into Aliyah’s car. Once her trunk was full, she made a trip down to the Rookwood Nike store and dropped off all the shoes. The employees there were super nice and grateful for all the hard work Paige and Aliyah did. They got so many pairs of shoes, they ended up having to take two trips to the Nike store!

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES

Luke Erny, Kayla Roeske, and Canton Hausfeld’s idea was to decrease the amount of energy used,and wasted, from lightbulbs in their community. For their project, they gave out new, energy efficient light bulbs to community members in exchange for old incandescent bulbs. This event took place at the Wyoming Civic Center on April 15th. This exchange gave the citizens of Wyoming the opportunity to trade their old light bulbs at no cost. These light bulbs would save them money and more importantly reduce the amount of energy used. Flyers were handed out with the lightbulbs to explain the project and why making the switch to energy efficient bulbs helps the environment and is better than incandescent bulbs.

The energy efficient light bulbs that the group implemented in homes around their community were GE Daylight LED bulbs. They were general purpose, so citizens could use them in as many ways as possible. They were a 60 watt replacement that used only 10 watts in return. These bulbs were predicted to last around 13 years. They save $83 in energy cost vs. a 60 Watt incandescent A19 bulb over the bulb’s life. With this in mind, and because we gave out all 300 light bulbs, our group has saved $24,900 worth of energy overall. The estimated energy cost of a single bulb is $1.20 per year. The annual cost of all these light bulbs would be only $360. This saves people time, energy, and money using the LED energy efficient bulbs rather than regular incandescent.

LED energy efficient light bulbs are better for the environment because they use less energy than regular bulbs which in the end means less pollution is produced. Less energy use reduces the demand from power plants and decreases greenhouse gas emissions. Most power plants burn coal, crude oil, and fossil fuels which is inexpensive, but gives off harmful byproducts like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. These bulbs also produce less heat, so cooling your house will cost less. Energy efficient light bulbs last longer than incandescent light bulbs, so you don’t have to buy new ones as often and you aren’t throwing away as many bulbs. 60 pounds of incandescent bulbs were collected from the exchange event and were taken to a recycling center where they were disposed of properly.

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES

Every event today is seemingly paired with a commemorative t-shirt. This causes a problem for the watershed because for each new t-shirt made, humongous amounts of water are used. Also, these commemorative t-shirts are often just thrown away when they could be used further. To combat these two problems, Lauren and Jenice set up a collection at their school to collect these t-shirt that to others seemed to be at the end of their lives. Then, the two along with volunteers created scarves out of the t-shirts that were too worn to donate. This way the scarves could be used again.

The first step of the project was the collection of the t-shirts. Lauren and Jenice utilized the class competition system at their school in order to create excitement for their project. Each grade was given a designated bin to put their t-shirts. The grade that collected the most t-got points in the overall school competition. The collection went on for two weeks from March 19 to March 29. Every couple of days, the t-shirts were counted, and the number was relied to the students in order to keep up the competitive spirit. In the end, the collection managed to bring in a whopping 511 t-shirts to be turned into scarves or donated.

Next came the process of making the scarves. First, all of the t-shirts were washed and dried to make sure they were clean. Then the t-shirts were sorted, with the t-shirts too worn to be donated going towards making scarves. Lauren and Jenice then set up a day to get volunteers to help cut and braid all of the t-shirts into scarves. The design of the scarves were four strand braids, long enough to be wrapped around twice and thick enough to act as an effective scarf. With an army of volunteers, Lauren and Jenice were able to turn many worn and torn t-shirts into lovely scarves to donate. Lastly, all of the scarves and t-shirts were donated to Valley Interfaith Community Resource Center while the t-shirt parts that were not part of the scarves were donated to Matthew 25 Ministries.