Welcome to the Community Adventure Program. Before we get started, we need to get some feedback about your outdoor experience, your thoughts about the environment, the community, etc. Please answer this survey honestly and to the best of your ability. The good folks who fund this class use this information to assess the performance of the class and this information will help us acquire new grants. Please Click Here To Take The Survey.
We decided that for our 4 Days in May project, and our action project, we would create a Greenhouse and Composting System for NVHS. We thought this would be a good thing to do because, after we are all gone from NVHS, future students would have a CE or Workshop that focused on the concepts of composting and growing that a greenhouse could provide.
In order to set up this resource, however, we had to do a lot of legwork in the community. We contacted professional growers and gathered their advice on what kind of greenhouse to build and what type of operation to run. The following are some of the people we spoke with:
· We met with
· Boulder Compost Company owner and operator Eric Simenson was kind enough to share his knowledge of “vermiposting,” which is composting using the help of worms. He brought in some bins to demonstrate the process, and he also gave us a great plan for building our own worm composting bin and system.
· Bryce Brown, founder of Our Love of Children Foundation, spoke to us about the project at Creekside Elementary where the school garden is used to augment school lunch for students. He shared visions of what a school garden could grow into and got us all very excited to continue our project.
In addition to speaking to professionals in the community, we also were given a huge amount of support from local businesses interested in our project.
· ReSource, a sustainable building supplier using recycled construction and building materials, donated ANY materials we could find in their yard for absolutely FREE. This was really great and it made us see that some businesses really do practice what they preach.
· McGuckins Hardware was very supportive in their donation of $120 of building supplies towards the creation of our greenhouse and composting system. Again, we were surprised by these local businesses’ belief in our action project.
Ultimately, we spent over seven weeks getting the logistics together so that this greenhouse could be built. It is with great enthusiasm that we are passing on this project to future CAP classes and look forward to seeing the structure up and running soon!
This quarter, CAP chose to work with local businesses in
order to help them become more sustainable. However, in order for us to offer anyone
advice on sustainability, we thought it’d be a good idea to figure out exactly
what a sustainable business is!
Now, if you think of most businesses in our
We teamed up with local businesses The Rio Grande, Boulder Ice Cream and Pekoe Tea House to see what we could do to help them become more sustainable. We provided an audit in which each business would discuss products used, utilities used, resources consumed, etc. We then analyzed each questionnaire and addressed non-sustainable practices and offered alternative, sustainable options for the business. In many cases, these options had to do with cleaning products, energy conservation practices and recycling and disposal practices. The local businesses were extremely receptive to our project and we were really surprised by how much they were willing to hear what we had to say. We thought they wouldn’t care about what a bunch of high school kids had to say but, in reality, they thought it was neat that we were providing a free environmental consultation.
In addition to talking and working with local businesses, we
made t-shirts that supported our campaign and we each learned a ton about
sustainability in the business world. We
hope that future CAP classes continue to work with this topic because there is
so much more that can be done and people are really excited to change to
sustainable business models!
The Issue
The New Zealand Mud Snail is
an invasive species that has been spreading through
The Project
We wanted to raise awareness
of this issue for as many people as possible. However, through our research of the topic we discovered that the main
agents of transmission of these species from one waterway to another are people
and animals. More specifically, we
learned that anglers and people’s pets are the primary means of transport due
to their significant contact with the water’s ecosystem. Based on these factors, we decided to target
the angling and pet owners community for our educational campaign. Before putting together information and
fliers we spoke to a number of experts on the issue and even were lucky enough
to have Dan Shaeffer, a wildlife biologist, come in and talk to us about how
What You Need To Know
About The
Native to
This quarter’s CAP class’
action project focused on educating people about the practice of being “carbon
neutral” and supporting renewable energy sources. In order to do this we studied conventional
energy sources, alternatives to these, and what it means to be carbon neutral.
In order to fully understand
carbon neutrality you have to know how the conventional energy grid works. We found out that fossil fuels, such as coal
and natural gas, are turned into energy at power plants and then that
electricity is sent to the “grid.” The
grid is best thought of as a general pool of electricity that is fed through
infrastructure like power lines, transformers and household sockets. All the houses and businesses in the
community are connected to the grid and use the electricity from it. Unfortunately, in order for this handy system
to function, we learned that the fossil fuels must be burned to generate this
energy. When fossil fuels are burned
they emit carbon dioxide into the air. In fact, when carbon dioxide is emitted into the air it combines with
other molecules and triples in weight, so for every 6 pounds of gasoline
burned, 18-20 pounds of carbon dioxide and other gases are created. The existence of these gases in the
atmosphere is regarded by the general scientific community to be a significant
factor in climate change and, as such, the reduction of these gases would
benefit our ecological well-being. Also,
only 15-40% of the carbon dioxide emissions each person produces come from
their personal actions (driving a car, heating a home, etc.). The other 60-85% comes from goods and
services you consume via factory emissions, energy used for transport,
etc.
Becoming carbon neutral helps
to fix this problem. To be carbon
neutral means to balance the amount of CO2 you put into the air by either
producing no carbon emissions whatsoever (which is very difficult and nearly
impossible) or by supporting a Green Tag/Sustainable Energy Credit/Renewable
Energy Credit programs. These programs
function by calculating an individual’s carbon emissions and, based on the
amount, providing a dollar amount that then goes toward the subsidizing the use
of renewable energy infrastructure. Much
confusion arises from the question of if you get strictly wind energy once you
buy a Green Tag. The answer is no. The money goes to adding more renewable
energy to the “grid” in the hopes that in the future this alternative energy
will push out conventional sources like coal or natural gas.
We talked to Diane Dandeneau
from the ConservED program about local businesses and companies that are
involved in the carbon neutral movement and we even created a website that
should be up and running soon. In addition
to surveying people and then educating them about what they could do to both
cut down their carbon emissions and support renewable energy to supplement
their emissions, we spent over 35 hours researching the details of this
complicated and controversial topic. When it was all said and done, we learned a tremendous amount regarding
where we get our energy and how we can do very easy and tangible things to
alter this. Ultimately, this will be our
generation’s duty to convert the existing energy structures into more
ecologically sound and efficient ones.
If every U.S. household replaced one roll of regular paper towels with 100 percent recycled ones, we’d save 544,000 trees. Source: Green Life - http://sierraclub.typepad.com/greenlife
As the quarter comes to a close, I want to get some open and honest feedback from the 4th Quarter 2007 CAP class to improve the CAP for future students. This information will not affect your grade, but please take it seriously. It will be reviewed by the school, the Cottonwood Institute, and this information will help us secure funding to make this class accessible to other high school students. Please Click Here To Take The Survey.
"Do not burn yourselves out. Be as
I am-- a reluctant enthusiast...a part time crusader, a half-hearted
fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure
and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more
important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So go
out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble
out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the
mountains, and bag the peaks.... and I promise you this much: I promise
you this one sweet victory over your enemies, over those deskbound
people with their hearts in a safe deposit box... I promise you this:
you will outlive the bastards."
-Edward Abbey
"Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world."
Immanuel Kant
"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot-stove lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
-Mark Twain
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