“The Water Conservation Project”
by Abha Nath, Braden Currey and Viabhav Verma
“The Water Conservation Project” by Abha Nath, Braden Currey and Viabhav Verma
The Water Conservation Committee is proud to present and recognize the work of Abha, Braden and Vaibhav, the authors of “The Water Conservation Project”. They are the new generation of water conservationists and we salute them.
Introduction by students:
My name is Abha Nath and I am a junior at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, CA. Along with Braden Currey and Vaibhav Verma, I have been working on an environmental project. The high school level of the Challenge focuses on energy-related issues that have local, national and global implications.
Our team chose to focus on water conservation. Over one billion people lack access to clean and sanitary water. The worldwide water crisis is truly a silent epidemic, affecting nearly every nation in the world. Our project focuses on educating kids about the water crisis and the ways we can conserve water at home with basic tweaks to daily habits.
We surveyed over 1100 students (middle and high school) and we noticed that the amount of shower time increases as kids go from middle school to high school – nearly 70% of high school students take longer than 10 mins to shower as opposed to 50% of middle school students. So we started a science contest at the middle and three elementary schools to see the change in behavior amoung kids (if they reduced their shower time, and/or turned off their faucet while brushing their teeth over 4 weeks, Jan. 18 – Feb. 14, 2012) after watching the video on the water crisis. The results were astounding.
Encouraged by our data, we truly believe that students need to be taught about water conservation when they are in elementary and middle school, so they start developing useful habits at an early age. In fact water conservation should be a part of the science curriculum.
We spoke at the Manhattan Beach board meeting on Wednesday, February 1st to convince the board members to include water conservation as part of elementary and middle school curriculum. We will be presenting our findings at the city council meeting in the near future.
We have been recognized internationally for our website on the water crisis. You can also find our You Tube video.
New Developments on the Water Conservation Project
Ms. Abha Nath speaks to Manhattan Beach City Council about water conservation. You can see it here on You Tube.