The third graders noticed that our cafeteria sells hundreds of tiny plastic water bottles at lunch, and none of them get recycled in the cafeteria. Our third graders will study weather and climate standards to learn more about the weather hazard of drought. They will learn about various drought conditions around the world. Then we will learn ways we can conserve water in our own drought-ridden state.
The approach we will take is to take data on how many water bottles are sold each day. We will use the data to create an awareness campaign for the other students to teach them about how much water is used to make and recycle those little bottles. We will sell STEM Launch reusable water bottles and encourage students to use those instead of getting the small bottles with their lunch. If we receive a mini grant, we want to use that money for purchasing recycling receptacles for the cafeteria. We will use the remaining funds to go toward purchasing a water bottle filler fountain. We will meet with district personnel and fund-raise in order to earn the remaining funds to buy these fountains. We will know if our campaign is successful if we can reduce the number of bottles that are currently distributed in the cafeteria (around 650 a day). We will also know we are successful if all of the bottles that are consumed in the cafeteria end up in recycling instead of in the trash. Ideally, our success will also look like more students carrying reusable water bottles to lunch and possibly even having water bottle fountains in the building. We will track the number of water bottles sold, water bottles recycled, and how many reusable water bottles come to the cafeteria.
