“Phyte Club”

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Dustin Elkins and Alexandria Riesberg phyte club project implementation colorado
Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado

In a school district where over half of students meet federal poverty guidelines, many students in the community do not have access to organic, healthy food and face cultural separation from the food they eat and where it
comes from. The spiraling growth of processed food and the food industry has created a relentless carbon footprint, which can be battled through local community gardening. By starting a garden program growing organic produce at the school, Dustin and Alexandria are providing classes and students with a hands-on resource to learn about their food, combatting the industrialized food processing industry (reducing the carbon footprint of food packaging, waste, and transportation). Once the school gardens begin to produce, they will donate the vegetables to the students who participated in creating the garden. In addition, they will sell the produce to the school lunch program through the Garden to School program. The money generated will be used to fund the upkeep and future development of the garden.

One Paint Can at a Time

2017, Milliken, Colorado, USA

Erin Engels and Keana Morris
Roosevelt High School, Milliken, Colorado

Throughout Weld County, leftover cans of paint are often tossed into the trash and sent to the landfill. Erin and Keana developed a plan to collect this unused paint. They worked with GreenSheen Paint Company (greensheenpaint.com) and organized a paint recycling day in their home town of Milliken. The students advertised at every school in their district and throughout the community. Although the weather did not cooperate, they collected over 1300 pounds of paint, stain and finishes. The water-based paint is remixed to create 16 new colors and the non-paint items were sent to the hazardous waste disposal site

Bee a Positive Change

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Brooklyn Johnson Bee positive change implementation student action colorado
Northridge High School, Greeley, Colorado

Brooklyn designed a pollinator garden at the Greeley Xeric Garden. She planted 10 pollinator specific plants that bloom at different times of year to attract local bees. In line with providing for native bees, she also created and placed bee baths and bee boxes in the garden. This created a source of freshwater and shelter for solitary bees in Colorado. Brooklyn planted
about 200 square feet of garden with bee-friendly flowers and did not use any insecticides or pesticides. Brooklyn considered multiple locations for this garden where bees would be able to live without detrimental human interference and had frequent visitation so that the garden would get Colorado student action project implemented attention and serve as an educational tool for the community.

In order to provide bees with a year-round food source, she placed plants that bloom at different points throughout the year, ensuring that there will be a continual source of nutrition for pollinators. In the spring, flowers like crocus, hyacinth, borage, calendula, and wild lilac will bloom. In the summer, bees enjoy bee balm, cosmos, Echinacea, snapdragons foxglove, and hosta. Zinnias, sedum, asters, witch hazel, and goldenrod
are late bloomers provide nectar in the fall. All of the flowers that were selected were known to attract bees and provide plentiful, easy to access nectar.

An information sign with a QR code was placed so visitors can educate themselves about the garden.

Batting Bugs Naturally

2017, Milliken, Colorado, USA

Devyn Wood
Roosevelt High School, Milliken, Colorado

When Devyn was a child, she lived in Washington State where there were hundreds of bats living near her home. After moving to Colorado, she noticed there were few, if any, bats in the area of her new home.
Understanding the connection between bat populations, insect populations and insecticide use, she decided to build bat houses and install them around her watershed. The project requires (1) determining locations to install bat houses; (2) building bat houses; and (3) installing bat houses. As the season permits, tracking of bat species can also be undertaken to determine how many bats are in the area. Devyn will be using a bat-detection device to monitor the newly built bat homes for increase in population and species. These results will be available in the fall of 2017.

10 Years of Pollution

2017, Milliken, Colorado, USA

Kristopher Anaya, Thomas Blake, Dalton Yost Colorado student action project
Roosevelt High School, Milliken, Colorado

This proposal involved reducing the use of plastic bags by promoting the use of reusable bags and making the community more aware of recycling them as well. The decomposition process of plastic bags takes more than 10 years which adds an unnecessary volume to the landfills. The team ordered 2000 reusable bags to hand out to students and staff at Roosevelt High School and the community. In addition,
the team redesigned the plastic bag recycling box at our local grocery store to make the box stand out to plastic bags consumers. This project has increased the use of reusable Colorado student action project grocery bags in the community while decreasing plastic in the local landfill.

Biodegradable Lunch Waste Project

2017, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Mazlyn Freier LUNCH WASTE PROJECT student action Colorado
Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado

Mazlyn Freier from Greeley Central High school identified her school’s problem of adding over 10,000 Styrofoam plates from the school lunch program to the local landfill every year. Mazlyn contacted the school district Nutrition Services to determine the convert her school to compostable sugarcane plates in the cafeteria. Mazlyn contacted local companies for samples of their compostable plates. Finally, she selected Eco Products, a local food service supplier from Boulder, Colorado, for the sugarcane plates for the school. 19 cases of plates were ordered and delivered to the school for use in the cafeteria. In addition, Mazlyn contacted a local composting service that agreed to pick up the colorado student action lunch waste project plate waste twice a week. The school has been using these plates since April of 2017, and plan on continuing this practice. Mazlyn has contacted the other schools in the district with the goal of implementing this program throughout Greeley.

Jacob’s Big Project

2017, Cinncinnati, Ohio, USA
Jacob
Jacob’s big project is a coloring book for kids developed and designed by Molly Mariani, Abi Barret and Ashley Moher. The coloring book has several interactive pages that gets students of all ages involved in the conservation message. Along with the book, Ashley, Molly and Abi designed several worksheets for different age children. The one for younger students has pictures and the kids describe whether it’s helpful or harmful. The worksheets for older kids include a vocabulary sheet.

The team knew from the start that they wanted to do a project that involved younger students. They didn’t just want to design a book, so they thought if they made it more interactive, they could get younger students to understand their role in protecting the environment. Designing a coloring book that the younger students could color on was one way the girls could get the students more involved. They also made a change to their original plan by adding the interactive worksheets so that they could measure the students understanding of the problems and test their knowledge. The addition really boosted their project because it allowed them to measure their success through the kid’s ability to complete the activity worksheets.
Jacob
To implement their project, Ashley, Molly and Abi visited local schools, which included a preschool and an elementary school. For the preschoolers, they read the book aloud to them then the preschoolers completed the “helpful or harmful” activity. For the elementary school visit, the kids read along with the story and colored the book. After the book was finished, they completed the vocab sheet to apply their knowledge.

Ecospace

2017, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EESl N°1 Nacional of San Antonio de Areco: Students: Patricio Espinoza, Jeremias Nahuel Nievas

This project proposes to create a space, within the school premisses, in which students can come in contact with renewable energies and its relationship with environmental care and global warming.

ecospace implementation

They found a busy place where lots of students pass everyday that now its illuminated by photovoltaic solar energy system and have dynamic panels with information of interest on the proposed topic. The information have visual and digital format so that students can see and carry the information in their electronic devices.

In addition, they propose this place as a reservoir of information prepared by teachers and students from this highschool, that can be shared with other schools within the basin.

Groundskeeperbot

2017, Carmen de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EES N°2 “Mariano Moreno” of Carmen de Areco: Student: Paula Perez Bianchi

This project is based on robotic and artificial intelligence technologies. At its first stage,Paula developed a robotic module that meets the irrigation needs of a garden. The system uses Arduino microcontrollers and an artificial intelligence node in charge of learning the different biological conditions to be able to make irrigation decisions based on soil moisture and plant demand.

The University of San Antonio de Areco (UNSAdA) sponsored a trip to the student to participate.

App Life

2017, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

app life EET N°1 of San Andrés de Giles. Students: Tomás Pellegrini,Valentina Miranda, Joaquín Coarasa, Cecilia Yucra Ramos.

This project suggests the creation of an application for mobile devices that warns about agrochemical spraying in the local areas and rural schools of the Areco river basin.This application is called APP VIDA, and has already been developed to be executed on phones, tablets and other mobile devices. This project is an easy and effective solution to a current problem of high social impact in the basin surroundings.

Status: The students have created the platform and are waiting for the Municipality to administer the rest of the information required for launch.