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 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.

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!

“Ecoclub” at Schools

2016, San Andres de Giles, Buenos Aires, Argentina

– Colegio Sagrada Familia –Students: Camilo Fernandez, Candela Mighetto, Valeria Manion, Fabrizio Saul Encinas Pinto

“Ecoclubs” are organizations constituted by children and young people who are committed to improving the quality of life of the population by promoting awareness of environmental care. This group of students proposes to start creating these institutions throughout the school basin, and they will be in charge of promoting.

Klimate Kids

2015 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Annika and Mykyla are a creative team. The duo proposed creating a children’s book to “teach kids good habits about treating the environment better.” The colouring booklet was drawn and designed by Annika and Mykyla, each page containing a different message about how we can care for the environment through good water saving habits. According to the girls, this is important because “ Children are who will inherit this world from the adults one day when they themselves become adults, it is important make sure that today’s kids grow up to have strong and friendly habits when taking care of the cities and towns we live in.”

Thanks to a contribution from Nutrien, a series of Klimate Kids booklets were created, printed out and distributed to a handful of lucky schools. Digital copies of the booklet have been shared with Manitoba Education so that other schools can access the files too!

Environmental Empowerment

2015 Portland, Victoria, Australia

Students from Bayview College in Portland were finalists in the 2015 Caring for our Watersheds competition, with their proposal called Environmental Empowerment.

Nathalia, Meg, Marlie & Sarra came up with an Environmental Education Program to teach younger students about their environment. They collaborated all their classes’ final ideas for the 2015 CFW competition into one educational program to raise awareness about their classes concerns.

They held a kids teaching kids day with the year 7 students at Bayview College running a range of environmental activities which focused on:

Overfishing
Biodiversity in our backyards
Litter and recycling
Water pollution
Local lagoon.

With constructive feedback from the year 7s the girls now plan to implement the program into the local primary schools as well.

This program is not only a fun filled day of environmental activities but it is teaching younger generations to care more for what is around them and how to look after their catchments environment now and into the future.

Allowing Children to Learn and Experience Nature

2014 Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

Maria Bunk wants children to connect with nature. “Keeping good care of our watershed and environment is very important because there is not much fresh drinking water left which means we need to learn to respect and care for our fragile mother nature in a more responsible way.”

Maria proposed an environmental education program for her school’s nursery school that includes an activity book that she created; an in-class aquarium for children to learn about water as habitat; seeds to plant to learn about how things grow; and a watershed model the class will create from clay. Using this model, the nursery school students will learn about pollution and get to experiment with how water moves through their watershed.

“I think that eduating young children is a great benefit because it will create a ripple effect. Children enjoy sharing their knowledge with others which means the message will be passed on to a bigger scheme of people!”

Green Learning

2014 Lockport, Manitoba, Canada

According to Kailey Evans children need to spend more time outside. As a result of spending less time outside, “children aren’t thinking about the environment or how to take proper care of their watershed.” She suggested creating an outdoor pond for students to do experiments, dip for water bugs, and learn more about water.

Kailey saw the perfect fit at a nearby school, where an outdoor classroom was already in place. This special classroom means a lot to Kailey: “When I was in grade seven at Lockport, this outdoor classroom had just started. The pond had been dug out, but it was never able to retain water so we could never use this pond to its full potential.”

Thanks to a generous contribution from Nutrien, the dugout is now a pond, and students are already dipping for bugs! As Kailey has pointed out: “Environmental education provides the capability and skills over time to analyze environmental issues, engage in problem solving, and take action to sustain and improve the environment.”