Students out in force for Earth Day

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This article was published 23/04/2024 (742 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Students from Brandon’s three high schools got together to lend a helping hand to Mother Nature on Earth Day, while science fair participants from across Westman came together at city hall to show off their environmental savvy.

École secondaire Neelin High School, Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School and Vincent Massey High School had a friendly competition with each other to see whose students could pick up the most trash.

“Vincent Massey has done this for three years now, twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring. And this year, we’ve decided to join with two other high schools, Neelin and Crocus, to see who can collect the most garbage,” said Quinton Grindle, a teacher at Massey who helped organize the cleanup alongside the school’s climate club.

The climate club was created three years ago with seven or eight members. Since then, the club has ballooned to 32 members. The president of the Massey climate club, Hailey Noto, first joined the club last year.

“The group is very nice and fun, and we all have the same values and beliefs of trying to help the environment and trying to implement different sustainable practices within our school,” Noto said.

Fun is the right word to describe the day. Groups of Massey students fanned out from the back field into the community, smiling and laughing with garbage bags in hand.

At Brandon City Hall, students from École New Era School, Neepawa Middle School and Glenboro School were awarded with this year’s Climate Change Action Award. The winners’ projects will be displayed all week at city hall.

“We’ve been doing the science fair awards for 10 years, and usually showcase them at city hall and have a meet and greet with the mayor. We changed the criteria of the award this year to line up with our climate action plan,” said Lindsay Hargreaves, Brandon environmental co-ordinator and organizer of the awards.

Hargreaves said the students’ projects align with four of the “big moves” from the climate plan — alternative transportation, renewable energy, waste diversion and conserving and protecting nature.

Six elementary students from New Era won with their group project on food waste and food loss. Another elementary student from New Era, Brinley Denbow, won for her project on “pretty polinators.”

Neepawa Middle School students Alyssa Thomson and Paisley Roels won for their project on the science of wind power.

Rayne Dalik, a Grade 10 student from Glenboro School, presented her winning findings on clean sea solutions. She studied what materials are most effective for cleaning up oil spills, finding that peat moss is the best option for cleanup.

The science fair also displayed second-year Assiniboine Community College student Shane Hutchings’ capstone project, “Reel-In Pollution: Fishing Line Recycling Bins.”

“I’ve always been into fishing and I’ve always seen all that fishing line everywhere, so I thought maybe recycling that line and repurposing it into new fishing products, which is what this project aims to do,” said Hutchings.

He explained that once the bins become full, they will be shipped off to be recycled and melted down into new fishing line and other fishing products. The City of Brandon sponsored Hutchings’ capstone project and has partnered with him to implement the design.

Earth Day in Brandon got an early start over the weekend when the Brandon Earth Day Committee organized their own cleanups around the community and set up recycling stations for old electronics. The committee supplied residents with cleanup equipment at the Riverbank Discovery Centre, Stanley Park, Rideau Park and Lions Memorial Park.

The committee offered $500 to the team that collected the most garbage and $250 for the second-place team. The committee encouraged winners to donate the prizes to a local charity.

The prize money was raised at a barbecue event last Friday and a social will be also held at Houston’s this Friday. Any excess funds raised will be donated to the Assiniboine Food Forest.

The provincial government marked Earth Day by announcing Monday that they would restore funding to three environmental non-profit organizations.

“Manitobans are seeing the impacts of climate change firsthand and they want to know that our province is doing its part to protect our air, land and water for future generations,” said Environment and Climate Change Minister Tracy Schmidt.

“Instead of taking action on climate change, the previous government cut funding to organizations doing important work to reduce emissions and protect our environment. We’re restoring that funding.”

Climate Change Connection will be receiving $100,000 to go toward advancing awareness, capacity building and action toward climate change across the province, the province said in a press release.

The Green Action Centre will receive $230,000 to advance climate action on adaptation planning, active transportation, the circular economy and outreach initiatives.

Finally, the Manitoba Eco-Network is being given $60,000 to work on inner-city climate adaptation work in Winnipeg through the Climate Safe, Green City project.

» cmcconkey@brandonsun.com