USA

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.

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 Conservation Education

2015 Sacramento, California, USA

As California is in its fourth year of drought, Jack Gumbiner and Sebastian Simmons of The MET Sacramento High School, wanted to increase awareness of the situation among their peers. While their fellow students had no doubt heard about the drought in the media, they did not seem to be taking any or enough action to conserve water. Jack and Sebastian wanted to not only educate students on the severity of the current situation, but also to provide easy ways the students could conserve water. They felt that hearing it from students their own age may have a different effect, and may inspire some teens to make simple changes to their daily lives. With project funds from Caring for Our Watersheds, Jack and Sebastian put together a water conservation lesson that included a fun interactive demonstration of water saving showerheads. They also designed and printed posters to hang at school and magnets to distribute to students and staff.

Southside Park Cleanup

2015 Sacramento, California, USA Students Cleaning Southside Park in Sacramento, Califormia

After Alexa Smith and Feliceya Torres coordinated a successful cleanup of riverfront Garcia Bend Park last year, they were inspired to continue the good work of watersheds stewardship. This year, the pair of MET Sacramento students submitted another proposal focused on Southside Park, which is adjacent to their high school.

While Southside Park is not directly on the Sacramento River, water moving over the land area enters several storm drains that run directly to the river. There is also a sizeable pond in the park, which provides habitat to resident ducks and geese. A clean up here would not only benefit the park aesthetically, but would also reduce the amount of debris entering storm drains, and thus river. This could also alleviate clogging of these drains during storm events, and local flooding. In addition, a cleanup would reduce waste entering the pond and affecting the aquatic habitat there.

As last year, they recruited several volunteers from their high school for the cleanup event completed in May of 2015. Project funds from Caring for Our Watersheds helped the students buy basic supplies for the event, including bags, rubber gloves, trash pick-up tools, water, and snacks for participants.

Farming for the Future

2014, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Farming for the Future

Within the Ohio River watershed, there are many subunits, including the Little Miami River watershed. The main focus of Nathaniel Polley and Chloe Halsted from Wyoming High School fell in Clinton County, as agricultural development contributes greatly to runoff in the Little Miami watershed. The ability to curtail this runoff would serve as a vital step to maintaining the health of the Ohio River.

After speaking with several local farmers, Nathaniel and Chloe discussed the techniques already being utilized with a proven record of success on farmsteads. Among these, and the easiest to implement, is the process of planting cover crops whose sole purpose is to conserve and improve the soil, thus providing a win-win situation for both the environment and the economic interests of the farmers. Cover crops need only a quarter of each acre on a given plot of farmland, yet they are instrumental in preventing erosion.

They needed to isolate which farms contribute the most runoff to the Little Miami watershed before strategizing where to plant cover crops. Overall, decreasing runoff and soil erosion via cover crops and waterways would ensure the stability of freshwater ecosystems and provide safer supplies of fish for human consumption. The initial money contributed to the activation of their phases I and II, which involved the funding for pinpointing sources of pollution alongside the purchase of cover crops. Moving forward, it is the hope that there could be governmental funding to allow farms to continue to improve and reduce the runoff going into the watershed.

The Dusty Old Trail

2014, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

The campus of Withrow High School is very large and open with a variety of areas that water can flow. At the bottom of each hill on campus, there are sewer drains, contributing directly to the problem of combined sewage overflow. Since the water is running straight into the drain and not being captured by plants or rain barrels, the sewage systems are flooded whenever there is intense rain. Dontaz Hadden and DeAaron Duskin noticed that near their school’s football field there was a dry dirt trail that results in an overflow of the drain and a large puddle when it rains. The water does not soak into the hillside along the fence since the hill is made of impervious clay.

To combat this runoff, Dontaz and DeAaron planted native grasses along the hill. The clay was dug up and replaced with healthy soil and compost, gravel was placed to serve as a walkway, and plants were planted. The Dusty Old Trail was replaced with a lively new one, bringing a breath of fresh air to Withrow’s campus.

Dusty Trail

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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