WEED-EX

2017, CINCINNATI, OHIO, USA

Claire Erny and Jacob Berry knew that residents in their hometown of Wyoming, Ohio yearned for a luscious and weed-free lawn. The dangers of trying to accomplish this goal can be serious and can contain a lot of chemicals and waste that may end up leaching into the waterways, affecting all aquatic life and drinking water. Jacob and Claire decided to come up with a recipe for an environmentally friendly and safe weed killer that is proven just as effective as other weed killers, but much more environmentally friendly, safer and a lot cheaper.

After looking at countless articles about natural weed killers, their teacher, Mr. Neimiller, informed them that he uses “vinegar and dawn dish soap” on his lawn at home, and it works wonders. To make a gallon of this weed killer, residents would need about one gallon of distilled white vinegar and two tablespoons of Dawn dish soap. Before deciding if they wanted to take on this project, Jacob and Claire needed try out this recipe for themselves. They soaked countless weeds with their homemade weed killer and approximately three hours later returned and the results were even better than expected.

The town of Wyoming has a smartphone app called ‘Next Door Wyoming’ people in the community can try to find babysitters, a cheap plumber, someone to walk their dog, pretty much anything. Jacob and Claire decided to make a post on Next Door Wyoming explaining their project and asking the citizens if they would like to try a bottle of the natural and homemade weed killer. Jacob and Claire expected to make about 10-15 bottles of weed killer, but received 40 requests in just 20 minutes. They quickly made extra bottles and dropped the weed killer off the next day and asked that residents email the results back to them.

Just one day after delivering the weed killer to all the residents, many emails came back with positive results and pictures. Not a single resident had a negative comment; some families even said they were going to stop using their old weed killer and start using the homemade version. Their favorite report came from a horticulturist from the Cincinnati gardens who said that her team was going to start using the homemade weed killer. They were able to book the Civic Center for late May (about a month after the final competition) and held an event to further educate the citizens on what a positive and major impact this has on our watershed, and only for $6.00.

Weed-Ex

HYDRATION STATION

2017, CINCINNATI, OH, USA

When faced with the challenge to improve her local watershed, Annie Smith thought of her school drinking water fountains. Her school is very old and while it has been remodeled several times, it seems several of the drinking fountains never got updated. So she developed a project she called the “Hydration Station.” It all started when she saw the enormous amounts of plastic water bottles being thrown away at her school. Her idea was to start the process of installing automatic water bottle refill stations around the school in order to reduce the number of plastic water bottles that Oak Hills High School throws away every single day.

Annie worked with the Caring For Our Watersheds staff, her mentors, teachers and Winnsupply company in Fairfield to acquire two water fountains to be installed in the school. Maintenance staff installed the first fountain (pictured below) in one of the main hallways within the school in order to maximize the usage of the fountain. After less than a week of being installed, the water fountain had already saved 395 water bottles, a number that will hopefully continue growing. That’s right, almost 400 bottles in just one week.

Annie graduated just after the CFW finals, but in the future she hopes to revisit the school and see how many water bottles have been saved. She hopes to take this newly collected data and propose that all the water fountains at Oak Hills High School be replaced with new water bottle filling stations. If this is successful, she plans on reaching out to the superintendent and proposing that all old water fountains in the district be replaced with new water bottle filling stations. She also hopes to work with the Oak Hills “Spirit Shop”, or book store, to get reusable water bottles with the Oak Hills logo on them, to be purchased and used by students and staff at the water fountains. The janitors had some issues with the ‘old’ plumbing, but they were able to build a frame to mount the new filling station. Persistence pays off.

Purgin’ Sturgeon

2017, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Purgin Sturgeon student action implementation project students with canoes

Luke Roffey from Westwood Collegiate is passionate about the creek near his home. “Sturgeon Creek provides vital habitat for many species of birds, mammals, amphibians, and fish, and it’s a critical piece of nature in an otherwise urbanized landscape.” He proposed an underwater cleanup with his peers using canoes and litter removal equipment.

Purgin Sturgeon student action implementation Luke in canoe “An underwater litter removal project has never been done in Sturgeon Creek before, and judging by the amount of garbage Westwood students remove from the banks of the creek each year, there is likely a lot of garbage under the surface that needs to be cleaned up. Removing garbage from an aquatic ecosystem such as a stream greatly increases the quality of the habitat for wildlife. Gone are hazards that can cause injury and entanglement for animals. Removing floating and submerged garbage will dramatically increase not only the natural beauty of the park, but also the functionality of the ecosystem.

Many people, especially youth, have become very disconnected with the environment, and participating in my project will allow them to reconnect with nature. Canoeing in particular can be very therapeutic, thus by participating in my project students will not only be bettering their local watershed, but also bettering themselves.”

Upon hearing of the project, a local company “Wilderness Supply” offered to loan all of the equipment free of charge. During the cleanup, students engaged with passerby’s explaining their project and the importance to the watershed. It was a great day they now hope to repeat on an annual basis.

Painting – It Comes Naturally

2017, Warren, Manitoba, Canada

paint nite student action

Rebecca Myskiw is a student at Warren Collegiate in Warren, Manitoba. She saw the potential to make a popular trend into an opportunity to educate the people of her community with a fun paint night! Paint nights are becoming something of a trend, but Rebecca’s special paint night had a twist- she had the participants use environmentally friendly paints to keep her watershed healthy! Regular paints include toxins and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can end up in our waterways and environment. Rebecca found Natural Paints that are 100% eco-friendly, containing no toxins or VOCs! She did not stop at a simple paint night, either. Rebecca donated the supplies (paint brushes, easels, extra paint) to her school’s Art Program after the paint night, so that her school could become more watershed-friendly, as well! Rebecca student action

“Natural Paints are an incredible way to care for our watershed. They don’t solve the problem, but they do help stop it. If I can reduce the amount of regular paints used in the school, I can reduce the amount of pollutants going into the watershed and help care for it with a simple idea for everyone.”

Bottles for Our Future

2017, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

students with water filling station

Plastic water bottles are becoming more of a problem every day. Making bottled water uses fossil fuels, wastes energy, costs a lot of money, and creates pollution when the bottles are not properly recycled. Anne Ocampo and Jessica Tran of Garden City Collegiate decided that they wanted to come up with a way to reduce the amount of plastic water bottles ending up in their watershed by finding an alternative. In a high school with around 1500 students and staff, the girls realized there was only one reusable bottle refill station.

“For a growing high school, it becomes difficult to share simply one water refilling station between 1500 students and staff combined. Students are provided with a schedule that sometimes becomes difficult to make time to wait in a long line to refill their water bottles. It sometimes seems hard to access and utilize, and because of that, plastic water bottles have become their companion.”

With the single filling station being located at one end of the school, it was often difficult to get to between classes. The line-ups could be lengthy, and there often just was not time to wait.

“Choosing to use a reusable water bottle over purchasing plastic water bottles is a small change that can contribute to a bigger change. Having a whole community come together and make these changes will bring us one step closer to overcoming a contributing factor to what damages our local watershed.”

Rods and Reels

2017, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Grade 10 s Rods and Reels Implementation Manitoba tudents at Elmwood High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba are passionate about sustainability! Their sustainability team has come up with a “Rods and Reels” program that aims to educate youth about sustainable fishing practices and how this can impact their environment and watershed. Students will learn skills such as how to properly debarb a hook, the importance of why, as well as conservation limits and how this links to overall watershed health. This lesson will culminate in a class fishing trip so they can learn practicing proper fishing etiquette and connect with nature.

Through the Caring for our Watersheds contest, a class set of fishing rods were purchased for the school so this program can continue to educate youth about the sustainable use of our water for years to come.

Battery Recycling

2017 Cinncinnati, Ohio, USA

Lexi Meckes is a nanny for three kids after battery recycling ohio student implementation school and is always having to switch out old batteries in game systems. Through this experience she became aware of how many batteries were being tossed out. She started becoming more concerned about the problem as she researched the chemicals inside every single battery and began thinking about the impact these batteries have on our environment. As a senior at Sycamore High School she has been involved in Environmental Club, AP Environmental class, and engineering. With her background knowledge and interest she became motivated to help solve this problem.

When Lexi was introduced to the Caring For Our Watersheds project she knew right away that she wanted to work on a project concerning batteries. She saw a big problem in her community and figured out a simple, direct way she could improve this issue. For her Caring For Our Watersheds battery recycling ohio student project project, Lexi put in place a battery-recycling program in all the schools within the Sycamore School District. These pails are located in the front offices of all schools and have begun overflowing with all the donations from community residents. She hopes recycling batteries becomes just as routine as recycling paper and plastic. With this permanent project Lexi hopes to educate her community on the simple actions they can take to make a big difference.

After the project got started, the company changed their prices and it became too expensive to mail the filled buckets, so Lexi set up a meeting with a local recycling company to discuss where she can send or take the batteries to locally for recycling. Although Lexi has experienced a few bumps along the way, her project has definite staying power because of the broad community support and participation.

She hopes this project will grow into a citywide program and prevent thousands of batteries from ending up in the landfill.

SAND OVER SALT

2016, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Sand over salt image
In the winter, Oak Hills High School uses a lot of road salt to de-ice the surrounding pavement surfaces. Bridget Kallmeyer, Erin Kallmeyer, and Lindsey Lawrence found this unnecessary, as more salt than needed was being used, and was running off into the Stormwater collection system that flowed into nearby waterways. To combat some of the excess salt use, the group came up with a plan to replace the salt used in the student parking lot with sand.

The project would first only cover ¼ of the student lot due to concerns from the building manager, but if it goes well, more of the space can begin to use sand. Additionally, the custodial staff will be educated on the use of sand and why using too much salt can be detrimental to the waterways.

Sand would potentially decrease the amount of money that is spent on salt annually, and provides traction and works in all temperatures. However, since sand does not melt snow, it would require more applications in order to keep students safe. If the implementation is successful, Oak Hills would be saving money and protecting their nearby waterways!

Cleaning Garcia Bend

2016 Sacramento, California, USA

Garcia Bend Park is a neighborhood park on the banks of the Sacramento River. Trash and debris left here by visitors or illegally dumped here continues to be an ongoing issue. Unfortunately, most of that trash ends up directly entering the adjacent waters, and directly or indirectly harming aquatic wildlife. Alexa Smith and Priscilla Dawson wanted to practice good stewardship of their watershed and encourage others to do the same. Alexa, who has been involved in clean-ups before, understood how eye-opening clean-ups can be; seeing all the accumulated debris directly can make students think twice before littering themselves and inspire them to take action. Priscilla and Alexa organized a group from The MET Sacramento to return to this area. In one morning, they collected 11 bags of trash from the park! Students enjoyed being outdoors while doing something good for their community and the watershed.

Down Cycle

2016, Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada

Emily Jackson from Wetaskiwin, Alberta decided that she could help improve the watershed by
reducing the amount of disposable water bottles used at her school.

Her Caring for our Watersheds project involved installing a water-bottle fill-up station in the main foyer of the Wetaskiwin Composite Highschool. Not only that, but she worked with the student council to sell reusable water bottles and post information about reducing waste and the benefits of reusable bottles next to the station.

Emily is happy to leave this legacy of down cycling at her school as she heads off to university.

“Down Cycling”, which is to use less, is even better then recycling, which still uses a lot of energy and resources.