GOING GREEN 2K16

2016, Alexandria, VA, USA

Despite the fact that students at George Washington Middle School in Alexandria, VA are introduced to recycling at a very young age and there are recycling bins in every classroom, 7^th grader were shocked to learn that their school didn’t actually recycle. When they interviewed their principal, he explained that the budget did not include recycling and all recycling bins were dumped into the regular trash. The students spoke with leadership and learned that the City of Alexandria pays for schools to recycle. They worked with janitorial staff, and now George Washington Middle School is properly disposing the recycling bins.

Now that the school was recycling again, students wanted to be sure their peers were taking part. They created an incentive program in which student volunteers monitor the waste and recycling receptacles at lunch and reward students who use the correct bins, allowing them to choose from a “treasure chest” filled with items like pens, candy, and magnets. After 10 consecutive days of recycling, students who participated will be asked to paint their name on a recycling bin in the school’s cafeteria. The cost of treasure chest items is about $300, which will be funded by Nutrien.

BAN THE BOTTLE CONTINUED

2016, Fairfax, VA, USA

Students from Lanier Middle School are continuing their fight to ban plastic water bottles at their school. Last year, the students placed 3^rd in the Caring for Our Watersheds contest for their Ban the Bottle proposal. They received about $3,200 in funding from Nutrien, and an additional $5,800 from other organizations to install six water bottle filling stations on the first floor of their school building.

Now, they want to install two additional water bottle filling stations on the upper floor, so 500 additional students will be connected to their efforts. Overall, data from the bottle filling machines shows that roughly 18,000 bottles have been refilled in only half a school year. The students estimate that is 392 pounds of plastic saved from landfills. They believe the two additional refilling station will stop over 20,000 bottles from coming into the bay. Nutrien has committed $1,600 for one additional refilling station and the students are fundraising to pay for an additional station and reusable water bottles for all students.

Media:
http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2016/apr/21/lanier-middle-teams-earn-two-first-place-awards-en/
http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2016/apr/15/fairfax-lanier-middle-cleans-environmental-action-/

COMPOSTING WITH MUSTARD SEED SCHOOL

2017, Sacramento, California, USA

Composting Mustard Seed School

For her Caring for Our Watersheds project, Clarissa Huerta, of the MET Sacramento High School, wanted to work with students from the Mustard Seed School, a private school established to help meet the needs of homeless children. When Clarissa visited, she noticed they had a garden area, but did not yet have a compost system. Clarissa’s proposal included the addition of a compost bin to the facility, but also a lesson for the students to teach them the environmental benefits of composting and how to use the bin. Clarissa met with different age groups to share about composting, give students practice using and maintaining the bin, and to meet the wiggly worm friends inside that will help decompose the food scraps and provide free, nutrient rich soil to the school’s and shelter’s garden. Clarissa pointed out, that even at a homeless shelter, there is still substantial food waste. The compost bin would also help decrease the amount of food waste sent to the local landfill. Nutrien project funds helped Clarissa purchase the bin and provide supporting materials for the lesson.

WATER FILTRATION SYSTEM AT THE MET

2016, Sacramento, California, USA

Justin Yu installs water bottle filling station at MET Sacramento High School

Justin Yu, of the MET Sacramento High School successfully worked with his school’s facilities maintenance staff to install a water filtration system on campus. This project was a follow-up to his previous project, in which he provided reusable water bottles to his classmates and delivered a presentation on the negative effects single-use plastic bottles have on the environment, and the benefits of reusable bottles. While many of the students used the bottles, some would still bring plastic bottles claiming they did it not for convenience, but for water quality issues. Providing the water filtration system would provide clean, filtered water to students, and encourage reusable bottle use—a win- win for their health, thirst, and the environment. According to the counter on the unit, within a month of installation, they had already saved 1400 water bottles!

AERATION MODIFICATION

2017, CINCINNATI, OH, USA
Aeration Modification
Matthew Murphy of Oak Hills High School knew that he wanted his project to be both simplistic and effective, with the main focus to be his school’s bathrooms. Matthew’s high school building is older and hadn’t been renovated in a very long time, making the bathrooms a prime candidate for a water conservation project.

He found inspiration when he took a school field trip to the Ohio River with his AP Environmental Science class. There they discussed the issue of combined water sewer systems in the Ohio River Watershed; essentially when there is too much rain, the sewer system bypasses the water treatment plant and deposits a ton of pollution into the Ohio River. This outing helped to establish the primary goal of his project: reduce the total amount of water that Oak Hills puts into its combined sewer systems as a means to reduce the total waste put into the river during periods of heavy rain.

Matthew’s solution was to replace the faucet aerators in all the bathroom sinks around the school. An aerator is the part of the sink faucet where the water comes out. The old aerators in the school used 2.2 gallons of water per minute, equating to a total of 360,000 gallons of water over the course of 95 days. (2,650 people x 2 trips a day x 20 seconds x 2.2 GM x 95 days). The new aerators that he purchased for his school only used 0.5 gallons of water per minute, this in turn should only use 80,000 gallons of water over 95 days. (2,650 people x 2 trips a day x 20 seconds x 0.5 GM x 95 days)

This project not only has the ability to help the school conserve water, it also will allow the school to save roughly $2,000 every 95 days. In turn, he plans to propose using these dollar savings to hold a mini watershed project in his high school. Discussing water conservation and rewarding innovative thinking will help future classes of students create a more environmentally sustainable school. Matthew’s hope is that year after year, students continue the work to improve the school’s sustainability.

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.

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.”

Garburating, Not the Green Option We Thought it Was!

2017, Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada

Anna-Marie Svistoun works in the cafeteria at her high school, Lord Selkirk Regional Comprehensive Secondary School in Selkirk, MB. She noticed that a lot of food waste was getting into her watershed through the garburator in the cafeteria. Anna-Marie came up with a solution: a strainer to collect more of the solid waste and separate it. The garburator at her school used more water for solid waste disposal than liquids, so to remove some of those solids, she would be decreasing water use. Another benefit to Anna-Marie’s solution is that it takes a lot of the organic waste that would end up in the water system out to be disposed of. A simple solution to an everyday problem!

“My project will have a lasting effect, as over 200 students take the Culinary Arts program in our school. Once my colander is implemented, the students will learn not to use their garburators at home. This will have a lasting impact on my watershed in years to come.”