Misdeed of the Microbead

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

Your everyday products such as toothpastes, facial cleansers, and body washes have little pieces of plastic called polyethylene beads which are more commonly known as microbeads. So, what’s the big deal? Well these little microbeads are so small in diameter that they aren’t picked up in filters, and end up in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Ultimately, they line the bottoms of water bodies, killing and harming fish and other species along the way. The best way to end this is through education and knowledge; if people actually knew of the harmful effects, they would seek a more natural alternative.
Education can be a small scale implementation but can quickly become a larger scale. Through social media we can support banning of microbeads, plus having anyone switch to an alternative could help on an individual by individual basis; every person that switches will make a difference. Just think, only one of Neutrogena’s “Deep Clean” contains thirty-six hundred thousand microbeads – one less tube in our water system would make a difference.

Shotgun Shell Recycling

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This proposal was to educate the community about the dangers of leaving shotgun shells and other gun casings on the ground after hunting, and also the benefits of recycling the brass from the shells. To implement this project, the students provided informational pamphlets at various hunting stores within our watershed, such as Garretson’s and Sportsman’s Warehouse. Within the pamphlets there is information about the environmental dangers of leaving the shells and casings, the perks of proper disposal, and how to remove the brass from the plastic of shotgun shells. Not only do the pamphlets aim to give information about the perks of proper disposal, but also let people know that places within our Watershed will accept the brass and will even pay for it.
The environmental benefits of educating the community about the proper disposal of shotgun shells and other gun casings are having cleaner hunting grounds; the wildlife within the grounds will not be negatively impacted by the metal residue, and groundwater will be cleaner from the reduction of metal pollutants from shotgun shells and casings.

Environmentally Friendly Household Cleaners

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This project was to create and distribute an environmentally friendly household cleaner. The goal was to get families to replace cleaners that contain harmful chemicals with ones that will not hurt the environment. The students made a recipe out of vinegar, Borax and water. The recipe was included on the bottle and in the brochure, so people could continue to make it on their own. Once the substance was created, the students passed their product out to families at the school’s spring parent-teacher conferences. They contacted the recipients of their product and asked them about their experience with the product to gain feedback as well.
The cleaner could potentially cut down on the amount chemicals used by each family that receives and switches to the students’ product. This in turn cuts down on the overall amount of chemicals polluting the water in our watershed and decreases Eutrophication, which saves local plant and animal life. The students were able to produce the project on a very small scale using only families at the school, but even then one hundred bottles were distributed. The focus of the project is to help people understand that they do not need to use products with chemicals and that they can make safer, cheaper options on their own; they will hopefully also tell their friends and family about this causing a ripple effect; the more people there are who know about it, the more people there are who will choose to make it on their own.

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.

Gusto-Matic 5280-X

2015 Greeley, Colorado, USA

This project consists of a foot-powered hand dryer that uses no resources and saves tons of resources. To combat the major problem of paper waste and the electricity used as an alternative, this students’ proposal was to create a foot powered-hand dryer. This foot powered hand dryer will create no emissions from electricity generation and will have no paper waste from thrown away paper towels. The only energy consumed: calories. Only waste created: heat. If the hand dryer is installed in one bathroom, it can save 13.5 trees worth of paper towels, and 810 lbs. of coal in electricity generation over the course of one school year. The GUSTO-MATIC 5280-X has many environmental benefits. The immediate benefits include no paper waste, and no electricity consumption. This has many secondary effects, like no deforestation for the paper towels, no need to make more room in the land fill or take out the trash every day, no water pollution, no energy consumption from power plants, meaning no air pollution from the power plants.

Compost Waste Management

2015 Blackie, AB, Canada

10th place winners in the 2015 Caring For Our Watersheds competition, Shane Hudson and Brady Waisman, from Blackie School, were concerned about composting in their community. As there is no municipal composting program in the small hamlet of Blackie, these students were worried that the majority of compost from homes was being sent to the local landfill.

As a solution to this problem, the students designed a project in which people from their community would receive education about composting, as well as free composters at Blackie’s annual “Green Day” event.

Through the initiative of these students, community members, students and teachers were educated as to the value of composting, as well as given composters to use at their homes. This project provided dozens of composters to home-owners, which will not only decrease the amount of compostable food waste entering the landfill, but will also encourage people to use compost on their gardens and spread the word about how composting has a positive impact on the local watershed.

Biocap

2015, Carmen de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Biocap is designed to provide a solution to the environmental problem of disposing household oils. The project creates a primary collecting center for used vegetable oils. The school also has an agreement with a company that is authorized to process the used oil into biodiesel. The school receives a large barrel for used vegetable oil from the company, and the household containers are emptied using a system designed and created by the students themselves.

In the near future, the students hope to encourage others in the community to create primary collecting centers as well.

Guardians of Nature

2015, Carmen de Areco, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This project addresses the problem of how empty plastic bottles (PET) are currently handled in Carmen de Areco. The first stage of this project is to set up a collection center at the school, where community members can take their empty plastic bottles. The school will provide a place to collect, press and package these disposable bottles before delivering them to a recycling center.

Once the first stage of the project is established, the second stage of the project will begin. The students plan to extend the collecting center to other schools within the area.

The money gathered from selling the collected bottles to the recycling centers will be used to continue improving and sustaining the permanent operation of this system within the school(s).

Farming for the Future

2014, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Farming for the Future

Within the Ohio River watershed, there are many subunits, including the Little Miami River watershed. The main focus of Nathaniel Polley and Chloe Halsted from Wyoming High School fell in Clinton County, as agricultural development contributes greatly to runoff in the Little Miami watershed. The ability to curtail this runoff would serve as a vital step to maintaining the health of the Ohio River.

After speaking with several local farmers, Nathaniel and Chloe discussed the techniques already being utilized with a proven record of success on farmsteads. Among these, and the easiest to implement, is the process of planting cover crops whose sole purpose is to conserve and improve the soil, thus providing a win-win situation for both the environment and the economic interests of the farmers. Cover crops need only a quarter of each acre on a given plot of farmland, yet they are instrumental in preventing erosion.

They needed to isolate which farms contribute the most runoff to the Little Miami watershed before strategizing where to plant cover crops. Overall, decreasing runoff and soil erosion via cover crops and waterways would ensure the stability of freshwater ecosystems and provide safer supplies of fish for human consumption. The initial money contributed to the activation of their phases I and II, which involved the funding for pinpointing sources of pollution alongside the purchase of cover crops. Moving forward, it is the hope that there could be governmental funding to allow farms to continue to improve and reduce the runoff going into the watershed.

Water Bottle Filling Station

Bottled water is becoming an increasingly popular choice among many students today. However, the these recyclable water bottles end up in landfills more often than not.

Ivonne Morales, a Greely Central High School student in Greeley, Colorado, noticed this trend and realized he must do something about it. Working with Liz Mock-Murphy, her teacher/mentor, she installed five water bottle filling stations in her school and encourages students to use reusable bottles.
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