Envirothon teams seek sustainable environmental solutions

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor
Of the many clubs at Glen Lake High School, the Envirothon team receives the least amount of recognition. Glen Lake’s three teams of five players each, advised by biology teacher Karen Richard, are the only Envirothon teams currently competing in our region. They are the kids who meet at lunch on Thursdays and talk about what should be done for the environment around us, but more specifically, what they are doing currently to accomplish this. Each team has a specific project to help the environment — the guidelines for any competing Envirothon team.
Haley Sobczak and Team Awesome’s Envirothon project was planting dune grass for the Park.

At the state competition in Port Huron on May 3 and 4, Glen Lake teams presented their projects before a panel of judges before commencing to take the written test. No, not the kind of test that is taken in a quiet room without windows. A bus drove teams of students around to different sites in the area, and each team received a folder with papers color-coded by section (wildlife, aquatic ecology, energy, forestry, soils and sustainable agriculture). Students congregated on the grass or under a tree to examine the questions before them. Each team had to examine a pit of soil, identify a track in a dirt patch, classify a tree or examine a stream with a benthic. The tests were held so deep in nature that plastic booties were passed out at the farm site this year so as not to transport diseases from farm to farm. And after a day of tromping around in the wilderness taking environmental tests, the teams returned to the cozy cabins at Camp Cavell, on the shore of not-so-cozy Lake Huron.
Of Glen Lake’s representatives, Team Awesome, finished particularly well, placing second overall and first in Forestry, Aquatic Ecology and energy and second in soils. Team Awesome’s environmental outreach project was raising and planting dune grass for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park Service). The team obtained dunegrass from the Park and raised the grass in the green house of Glen Lake’s biology lab, with much enthusiasm for its slow growth. The students planned to replant their grass at the end of May with the help of the Park.
Two other teams also competed: Team Yea That’s Us and the Tiny Salmon. The Tiny Salmon raised salmon in a giant tank in the biology lab to release into the Crystal River on May 18. Its goal was to teach children that salmon were a sign of good water quality and to inform them of the importance of taking care of our watershed.
Yea That’s Us attempted to introduce biodegradable plastic wear into the school lunch program. The idea for this came from Maura Niemisto, who saw the biodegradable plastic ware used at the music festival in Telluride, Colorado and told the rest of the team about the benefits of it. Yea That’s Us ordered sample spoons and trays from the non-profit organization World Centric and buried them in flowering pots with school spoons and school trays, watering them faithfully every week to simulate landfill conditions. After six weeks the biodegradable items looked positively putrid while the school items looked like someone could still eat off them. After a presentation to Linda Crouch (the head of the lunch program), Yea That’s Us concluded that the biodegradable plastic wear was wonderful and necessary but too expensive for the lunch program to use at this point. Neverthelesss, the school was notified of the issue to raise awareness and concern, mostly due to a survey passed out at the beginning of the operation. All high school students were given a survey asking them if they would support the change to biodegradable plastic ware. The results were 72 percent in favor of the change and some students asked for returning to silverware, which Glen Lake no longer uses due to students too frequently throwing them away. Even though their endeavor did not succeed this year, Team Yea That’s Us has felt the rewards of being truly involved in a solution, as have the rest of the Envirothon members at Glen Lake. Envirothon fills the perfect niche for high schoolers: a way to learn and a way to be involved, and a rewarding trip to Port Huron for their troubles.