Water Stations for San Marcos High
$10,000 in Grants Fund Plastic Bottle Reduction Effort
The San Marcos High School Earth Club has received two national environmental grants of $5,000 each. The Alliance for Climate Education awarded the Earth Club the funds to install filtered water stations on campus for refilling reuseable water bottles in an effort to reduce the number of plastic water bottles discarded daily.
The award is a result of a project in which the Earth Club joined forces with the school’s special education students, students at La Colina Junior High, Santa Barbara Junior High, Santa Barbara High School, and UCSB’s Environmental Affairs Board to collect 3,500 plastic water bottles over a three-month period. These bottles, which represent the number thrown away in the United States every five seconds, were displayed at Santa Barbara’s 40th annual Earth Day festivities. The water bottle “sculpture” was the winning project for both the Alliance for Climate Education grant and a $5,000 Grand Prize from DoSomething.org’s national competition “Increase Your Green.”
In addition to the grants, San Marcos Earth Club was awarded four HP Artist Edition laptops from Hewlett-Packard. The laptops have been distributed to the San Marcos Special Education Department, AP Environmental Science program, and the Earth Club.
The club was awarded these prizes in a school assembly hosted by DoSomething.org and Hewlett-Packard. During the assembly, world-renowned environmentalist David deRothschild congratulated the school via Skype from his boat Plastiki, which is made of discarded plastic water bottles.
San Marcos Earth Club president Rachel Venturino and vice-president Amy Ransohoff announced the awards at a June Santa Barbara School District Board meeting.