Rain Gardens: Stopping Runoff At Its Source

2019, Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Casbah Parlin
Casbah’s concern revolved around the fact that rivers, groundwater, and oceans are being polluted by plant nutrients and sediments that are resulting to dead zones in the gulf of Mexico. To combat these problems, Casbah constructed a rain garden at the Guadalupe Center. Rain gardens absorb excess rainwater that would otherwise runoff and transport pollutants that can harm the watershed. Casbah’s rain garden will help improve our watershed’s air quality, improve the water quality of the runoff, attract beneficial insects, and provide an aesthetically pleasing project that residents can admire on their walks. Casbah believes that his project can have a huge impact when it becomes a wide-spread activity within his community. He believes that replicating this around our watershed will greatly decrease the amount of runoff and help compensate for the many impervious man-made structures.
Rain Gardens

Water Tolerance 101

Water Tolerance

2019, Fort Collins High School, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Branden Wiechert, Trey Grass
Branden and Trey worked towards increasing the number of drought tolerant and native plants in their communities to decrease the use of water. They believe high school students are key to improving their watershed. They educated their peers on the issue and the benefits from using native, drought tolerant plants. Branden and Trey passed along this information through the flyers they posted around their school and community and hosted several plant sales that were open to the public. Their project helped their community cut their water bills, decrease their water use, increase proper wildlife habitats, and increase groundwater recharge.
Water Tolerance

For Your Tires

2019, Northridge High School, Greeley, Colorado, USA

Sergio Lopez, Daniel Casas
According to Sergio and Daniel, improper tire air pressure can affect your mileage up to 3%. Improper air pressure can increase our use of gasoline which then leads to higher use of fossil fuels that contribute to green house gasses. This in turn affects our watershed. Sergio and Daniel hosted several tire clinics at their school to educate their peers about the issue. They also checked their peers’ tire pressure and aired them up to the appropriate tire pressure for those that needed it. These students also collected data on their peers tire pressure and collaborated with Les Schwab tire whom assisted them with the tire clinics. Each student to have their tires checked received free snacks and a tire pressure gauge. Of all the cars they tested, 50% of those cars needed air. Their calculations show that 13 cars saved 3.8 gal of gasoline each week once their tires were filled to the appropriate amount which computes to over 2 tons of CO2 not entering the Poudre watershed.
For your tires

BE IDLE FREE

2019, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Idle Free
Chris Murtaugh, Bella Saba, and Kiernan Cinque thought of the idling problem in their school community when presented with the Caring For Our Watersheds competition. They saw that some people do not realize when they are idling, consequently harming the environment, the people around them, and even their wallets. Anytime an engine is running, a car releases exhaust that contains harmful particulates and greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. When released, these particulates can simultaneously put people at risk of various health issues including asthma, heart disease, and cancer. Idling additionally hurts your wallets.

Unfortunately, in their school’s community idling is extremely prevalent. They have 3 school carlines where parents will show up as early as 2 PM to pick up their kids despite school being dismissed at 3:15 PM. This means cars will be idling for over an hour. Their solution to this problem in their community was to post 6 “no idling” signs around the campus to help diminish the harmful environmental and health effects of idling. Additionally, they posted an excerpt to their school’s weekly newsletter, informing the community of the traffic and environmental changes on campus.

Through these signs and the continued circulation of the newsletter, they hope to limit and eventually eradicate the idling problem on their campus. Through their campaign they not only helped to prevent idling, but also spread awareness about air pollution, their watershed, and environmental sustainability as a whole. Ultimately they felt that creating a more cognizant and responsible community was their greatest achievement throughout the entirety of the project because of its impact on the lives of future generations.

Campus Mural and Garden

2018, Sacramento, California, USA

Jesha Morgan, Jackson Mossman, Emma Lotter, and Dominic Wing, students at George Washington Carver School of Arts and Sciences, combined their passions for art and gardening in their Caring for Our Watersheds project.

Campus Mural

In an effort to communicate an environmental message, beautify their campus, and demonstrate water-wise planting, this group completed a project that included painting a large water- and nature-themed mural and planting a small California native species garden in an adjacent area. They hope to awaken a sense of environmental consciousness in the student body as they see and interact with the art and garden.

CREATING A MORE BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Beautiful Tomorrow

While driving to and from school, Lily Melink would notice maintenance crews mowing the medians and berms of highways and local roads. She realized that mowing and maintaining acres of grass multiple times a year is responsible for releasing varying levels of CO2. Since the burning of fossil fuels is the main contributor to the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, Lily wanted to find an effective solution to reduce the number of times the grass had to be cut, and therefore reduce CO2 emissions. She decided to plant wildflowers in these spaces to replace grass because wildflowers only require maintenance once a year.

This project was inspired by programs for planting wildflowers in North Carolina and Texas that Lily had read about. When her environmental science teacher introduced the Caring For Our Watersheds program to her class, Lily decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to implement a similar project in Cincinnati. She read more about wildflowers and learned that they have more benefits to the environment than just reducing the amount of maintenance and therefore CO2. Wildflowers also help prevent erosion and provide habitat area for wild life such as pollinators.
Beautiful Tomorrow

Lily hopes that her project can educate the public on simple actions they can take to benefit the environment and increase community pride in their surroundings. She has already had positive feedback from the public, and says that “It doesn’t take much to make a positive impact on the environment or a community!

Education Lesson Plan

2017, Carman, Manitoba, Canada Hannah and students student action

Hannah Petrie from Carman Collegiate felt there was a lack of education regarding climate change. Given her experience working with kindergarten and Grade 1 students through an internship program, she determined education was the key.

“I believe teaching the young students will promote a lifestyle that contributes to healthy environment, since they are the future. The lesson I create can be taught by other teachers, I would be willing to share the documents and information needed to reiterate the lecture; the lesson does not need to only be delivered by me. Allowing other teachers to have access to my lesson would only benefit the watershed additionally.”

Hannah created her lesson plan and has already delivered it to local elementary students. Teachers are encouraged by Hannah’s enthusiasm and determination for this type of awareness lesson to spread.

Reducing Greenhouse Gases Through Transportation

2017, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Reducing GHGs student action Manitoba

Everyone knows that car emissions pollute our environment, but Kennedy Link from West Kildonan Collegiate in Winnipeg, MB decided she could do something about it! By encouraging students to carpool or bike to school, she could decrease the harmful emissions that would otherwise be emitted by cars used to transport those students. She had new bike racks installed with an incentive program including prizes for biking, and was able to get her principal to offer “carpooling” parking spots at a discounted rate to entice students to use them.

“Carpooling and biking will reduce our school’s carbon footprint immensely, and is a step in the direction of preserving our watersheds. My proposal may seem small, but every person counts and I hope more and more people become involved.”

Food Wastage

2016, KANIVA, VIC, Australia

Remmi King and Tavie Goodwin 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.

CLEAN WOMEN, CLEAN WATER

2016, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Clean Women, Clean Water
Abigail Aubrey, Taylor Schmidt, and Alex Herbert attend Mount Notre Dame High School, whose student body is entirely female. They learned that a major problem for watersheds is that girls are flushing their menstrual products down toilets, impacting plumbing and creating waste that sits in landfills. To combat this problem, the group wanted to educate their peers and encourage them to try reusable pads and menstrual cups.

Women throw away and flush hundreds of disposable products and their packaging every month, driven by an industry that promotes the mindset of “out of sight, out of mind”. Disposable pads or tampons aren’t out of sight or mind, however, they are everywhere. To avoid toxins and the waste from traditional products, there are reusable alternatives. One menstrual cup or reusable pad will prevent waste and the cost of disposable products each month.

To educate the women of their school, Abigail, Taylor, and Alex created a week-long event called “Pad Wars”. During this week each grade is challenged to raise the most feminine hygiene products to send to Uganda so that young girls can continue to go to school. If someone brings in reusable products, they will receive extra points. Then after school, students would be able to attend a workshop about the importance of the watershed and receive a reusable menstrual cup. Through education, the group’s hope is that their peers are called to change their habits. In that way, they will be helping their watershed while taking care of their bodies!