When former Earth Force
students in Erie, PA moved on to high school, they realized
that there weren’t many opportunities to really make a
difference in their environment. These
kids didn’t wait for something to happen – they created
it! The energetic group worked with Earth Force guidance
to write two grants and during the 2001—2002 school year,
were awarded a Department of Environmental Protection Growing
Greener Grant for $27,000 to start a Junior
Pennsylvania Lake Erie Watershed Association (JrPLEWA).
Alison
Phillips, one of the grant writers, had been an Earth Force
participant for six years and realized the
value of “creating change” in her earlier learning
experience. When asked what she was most excited about after
receiving the grant, her response was, “Realizing
that you can make a difference.”
JrPLEWA’s first goal was to collect
information about their smaller watersheds and to design
projects that focused on activities that would protect, help
to restore, and promote development that would help the Pennsylvania
Lake Erie Watershed stay environmentally
healthy for a long time. They were especially interested
in teaching people about nonpoint source
pollution - pollution that isn’t dropped directly
into the water, but gets washed into the water.
Their first discovery was that cigarette
butts are the number one form of litter on the beaches
of Presque Isle. These cigarette butts take many years to decompose,
and release chemicals into the environment when they do decompose.
Further research taught them that five
cigarette butts per smoker per day are littered by the 1.3 billion
smokers in the world. Thousands and thousands of them
get washed into water supplies around the world.
JrPLEWA
designed a Cigarette Butt Campaign
that they hope will raise public awareness about the effects
of cigarette butts on the environment by encouraging businesses
to place stickers with their slogan “Keep
‘em outta the bay, throw them butts in a tray!”
in their windows and cigarette butt trays on their properties.
to Kids in
Action - Stories
