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.

Xeriscaping our School

2015 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Manothri Malikarachichi and Sadie Simpson from Montgomery School focused their project on implementing a xeriscaped landscape at their school as a pilot project to educate students and their community about the benefits of using drought-tolerant plant species in place of conventional water consumptive landscaping techniques.

Xeriscaping has many benefits and helps our local watersheds in a number of ways. By planting with native and drought tolerant plants you are reducing how much outdoor water is used in your home. These plants require much less water than conventional lawn and gardens. Some native and drought Student winner photo xeriscaping our school student action project tolerant plants only require the intermittent rain that falls through Saskatoon’s summers!

Xeriscaping is also beautiful. It provides pops of colour and beauty rather than the monotonous green patches of conventional lawns. Once a xeriscaped landscape is installed and established, there is little work needed. There is no need for excess watering, the use of pesticides, fertilizers or gas for mowing! All of these inputs on our lawn and gardens impact our watershed because they can wash into our storm drains and into the river harming sensitive aquatic habitat. But, with a xeriscaped garden, this doesn’t happen because those inputs are not needed.

The students worked with their school to install a xeriscaped landscape in their outdoor classroom area. They are hoping to receive neighbourhood support for long term maintenance in partnership with the school.

Microbeads Educational Video

2015 Blackie, Alberta, Canada

The 2015 Caring For Our Watersheds 4^th place contest winners were Brayden Brausse and Nicholas Locken from Blackie School. These students were concerned about micro beads in the watershed, and the impact these small pieces of plastic have on plants, animals and water quality.

To bring awareness to this issue, the students produced a video about the harmful effects of micro beads and the use of alternative products that do not cause harm to the watershed.

Mirco beads come in 2 forms—polyethylene and polypropylene, both of which are used in household products such as exfoliating face washes and toothpaste. Micro beads are no bigger than a grain of sand can pass through storm water and waste water treatment systems (unfiltered) into the watershed. This plastic can then be ingested by fish and other sea-life and move up the food chain into larger creatures.

Alternatives to products containing micro beads are plentiful and widely available. They include cleansers containing walnut shells, apricot seeds or oatmeal. Through their educational video, these students were able to provide information about the harmful effects of micro beads on the watershed, and inform people on available alternatives.

Game for Change

2015 Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The 9^th place winners of the 2014 Caring for Our Watersheds competition were Maddie Catling and Sarah Abt from St. James School. As part of their Global Leadership Class, these students were involved with the development of a web game entitled “Game for Change”.

This game teaches people about global environmental issues, including the state of our watersheds. The objective of the game is to reach a certain standard of living so you can sustain your life. The more developed the country you choose, the easier it is to reach this sustainable level. You ‘win’ when you have: 50 Health Points, 50 Water Points, 30 Education Points, $75 Global Bucks or a biosand filter or plumbing. Once players complete the game, they can visit the “actions you can take” page for lesson plans, stewardship information and ideas about how to decrease environmental footprints.

Through the development of the “Game For Change”, students from St. James school not only learned about their local watershed and environmental stewardship, they were able to educate people worldwide about the state of our watershed and how to have a positive impact on the environment regardless or economic status or geographic area.

Get a Tweet on This: Greening Golf Courses with Birdhouses

2015 Ponoka, Alberta, Canada

Avid golfers, Mina and Brooklyn from Ponoka were worried about what effects pesticides sprayed on the course would have on their watershed. As part of their Caring for our Watershed project proposal, they researched the effects of pesticides and solutions to reduce them. They found that birds are natural insecticides, eating many of the pesky insects that golfers dislike.

To build awareness of this topic the girls were present at the golf course spa event to give away information cue cards, cash wash coupons and natural beauty products. They also held a draw for a bird house. They hoped that the information and products would help people become more aware of what they use at home.

With help from local businesses and family, Mina and Brooklyn built 75 bird houses to put up at the two local golf courses (one house at each of the 55 holes plus extra) to encourage the natural reduction of unwanted insects. The golf courses were happy to be involved and support these young stewards. Mina and Brooklyn are happy to see their ideas in action and look forward to enjoying a round of golf with more beautiful birds on the course, and less pesticides in their watershed.

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.

Wetland Creation

2014/2015 Gimli, Manitoba, Canada

Dean Mulroy and his team of fellow students proposed a very ambitious wetland creation project in Gimli, Manitoba. They wanted to expand an existing creek running along the school property into a larger wetland.

“The Willow Creek watershed, which is our area’s closest section, is along the western coast of Lake Winnipeg, also known as the Interlake region. It contains the rural parts of Armstrong municipalities, Gimli, Rockwood, St. Andrews, and all of the surrounding cottage country. This watershed’s drainage is roughly 1,210 square kilometers and contains roughly 620 km of ordered drains with two lake complexes”

They knew the natural filtering process would improve the health of the watershed as a whole. As well, they wanted students and community to benefit from the both the opportunity to study the area and its beauty. This team worked with the municipality, Manitoba Hydro, and the local Conservation District to ensure the feasibility of the project as well as to secure funding partners.

The success of this project is thanks to a dedicated team and strong community support!

Fixing the Filter

2014 Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada

Janelle Klainchar wanted to make a difference in the health of the Lake Winnipeg watershed by installing a dilution tank in her school, Selkirk Regional Comprehensive School. The old system was not functioning properly and Janelle felt she needed to step in and make a change for the better. The dilution tank has now been successfully installed thanks to Nutrien through the “Caring for our Watersheds” contest!

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