Reducing Water Use with Faucet Aerators

2016, Sacramento, California, USA

Faucet Aerators student implementation project California winner photo Brian Shan was proud to place first in the 2015 Caring for our Watersheds contest for his proposal to install aerators on faucets in his school. Faucet aerators deliver a mixture of water and air, limiting how much water is released while maintaining pressure and reducing splashing. The aerators, relatively inexpensive and easy to install, help conserve water and reduce energy use and costs.

Brian met with his school principal and facilities director to obtain permission to make this easy upgrade that would have the potential to reduce water use from hand washing by 40%. After obtaining approval he purchased aerators and installed them in 18 sinks located in bathrooms on his school’s campus. Knowing that this relatively simple project can save a lot of water, Brian plans on extending his project to other schools in his district.

Water Conservation….easy as 1, 2, 3 (or at least installing the aerators!)

Notes of Nature

2016 San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EES N°2 Escuela Pannunzio, San Antonio de Areco.

The project proposed the realization of an educational mural on the walls of the school that represents the harmony and beauty of nature accompanied by musical concepts.

implementation of notes of nature Four murals were painted along the wall, which form a musical circuit, intertwining nature, the seasons, and the different pictorial art styles.

Each visual narration represent the magnificence of a musical work in 4 meters in length, and the flora and fauna are represented inside.

This is now a place that reminds the students every day of caring for the whole World.

implementation of notes of nature

Musical Nature

2016, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EESTN°2 . Escuela Pannunzio, San Antonio de Areco.

The project proposes to compose a melody inspired by nature in a collaborative way with students from other places. The project was carried out with the help of a composer specialized in collaborative musical composition, called Hernán Alzieri.

Renewable Energy

2016, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

EEST N°1. Students: Julio Gastón Zarate, Patricio Emilio, Juan de la Cruz Barroso, Juan Bautista Ojeda

This project is based on the school developing and creating three educational modules about how to use solar photovoltaic energy, hydraulic energy and wind energy. This project was implemented together with the UNSADA (San Antonio de Areco University).

renewable energy student action

Sweet Dreams for the Environment

2016, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

– EES N°4 Malvinas Argentinas –Students: Carlos Roman Barrios, Brisa Regina Gambatesa, Alexis Fabián Sambugnah, Sabrina Trinidad Sosa

This project will focus on an environmental problem associated with waste produced by the horse racing industry, what is known as “the horse bed”.

vermicomposting student action Students proposed the implementation of a worm compost (vermicompost) production module. The aim of this is that it will allow students to learn how to manipulate all aspects related to the production and selling of a natural fertilizer like worm compost (vermicompost), and it will enable them to imagine, in the near future, a local source of green work.

Forbidden to Walk by the Kiosk

2016, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

– EES Técnica N1 “Jorge Alfredo Maciel”- San Andres de Giles. Students: Antonio Leandro Avila, Joaquín Gobetti, Melody Selene Prieto, Agustina Ariana Retamar

This project sets out the nutrition and health of adolescent students as an environmental issue, and points out the important role of the food sold at the school kiosk as a sphere of action to develop better habits.

Villa Espil – A Place for the Butterflies

2016 Villa Espil, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Escuela de Educación Secundaria N°5 – Villa Espil, San Andrés de Giles. Students: Sonia Sequeira, Mónica Figuerea, Susana Lescano, Verónica Pausa

A rural town of just a few inhabitants wants to see butterflies again. Driven by this idea, they proposed to adapt gardens and town squares for butterflies to be able to complete their life cycle.

butterfly mural 2

The proposal supports not only the production of biodiversity, but also aims at the possibility of developing tourism around these small insects and the beautiful flora that allows this by creating a huge mural in the town entrance.

B.E.L.U (Bicicleta Energía Limpia Universal – Bicycle Universal Clean Energy)

2016, San Antonio de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

– EES Técnica N1 “Jorge Alfredo Maciel”- San Andres de Giles. Students: Pablo Díaz, Mario Miguel Martínez, Juan Gastón Guerrieri, Ignacio Menchaca.

– The B.E.L.U. Project proposes the construction of a prototype designed to transform mechanical energy into electricity.

The aim of this project is to contribute with the environment, raising awareness in the community about clean and healthy energy. It also shows how we combine healthy exercise with concern about energy resources.

Plastic is Drastic – Soft Plastic Collection

2016, WARRNAMBOOL, VIC, Australia

In 2016 Warrnambool Special Development School (WSDS) students Destiny, Zander, Caleb and Caleb placed in the final competition for their proposal Plastic is Drastic. They saw that they could make a bigger difference in the recycling of plastics at their school by putting strategies in place to dispose of ALL plastics in a sustainable way.

In Australia we use around 5 billion plastic bags each year. 150 million of these in up littering our environment harming our waterways and our wildlife (Clean-up Australia Day).

WSDS has always recycled hard plastic, such as plastic bottles and yogurt containers but soft plastics always went to land fill, such as plastic wrap and plastic bags. The students did some research and found there was a local business that collects these ‘soft plastics’ for recycling and re-use.

As a result the school has put the following policies in place indefinitely to help reduce plastic going to landfills and into the environment:

Educating students and teachers in the school about the damage that plastic can cause when dumped into landfill polluting not only our water catchment but our oceans too.
Continue to discourage the use of plastic through regular rubbish free lunch days, promoting the use of re-useable plastic containers in lunchboxes and promote rubbish free foods, clearly labeled bins in each classroom and the introduction of the ‘Recycled Scarecrow’ competition.
Implement a soft plastic collection throughout WSDS via 3 central locations around the school where each class can take their soft plastic at the end of each week. While at the end of each term the bags of soft plastic are collected from each location and taken to a local collection centre where they are compressed and then taken to another location for recycling and re use.
Encourage and advise families in our school to minimize the use of plastic in the home and how to dispose of it in a sustainable way when they do have it via our school newsletter.
Inform the wider community that ‘Plastic is Drastic’ through ‘Kids Teaching Kids’ days in Warrnambool, so far taking our message to 6 other schools in our catchment. We conduct two workshops called ‘Plastic is Drastic’ watching an iMovie about why plastic is drastic and making ‘recycled scarecrows’ using plastic we collect that would go to landfill otherwise.

The students believe these are really easy strategies to implement in any school and encourage all schools to follow suit.

Food Wastage

2016, KANIVA, VIC, Australia

Remmi and Tavie from Kaniva College placed in the top 10 of all the entries submitted in the Australian competition of Caring for our Watersheds with their proposal about wasting food. They wanted to reduce organic food going to landfill and thought the best way to so in their community would be through education.

Remmi and Tavie discovered that amazingly, the average Australian household wastes up to 345kg of food a year, most of this ending up in landfill. At the same time, when organic food rots in landfill it creates methane, a harmful gas to us and the environment.

They figured if they reached out to their local community via their school classrooms they could directly influence 250 households with the potential to reduce 86,250kg of food going to landfill. This is a huge number and this is just our small community; the project could definitely grow bigger and go into other parts of our catchment.

The idea was to create a fun comic to teach people the facts about wasting food, through the costs both economically and to the environment. This comic was linked into the cooking classes at the school. These were specialized classes teaching students how they can save food from going to landfill by giving them ideas about how to use left overs and create shopping lists so less food goes to waste. Sending this comic home with them after the class ensures the message gets taken home to their families.