If you want to join this great network of YES! teams, contact us at sayyes@yesmn.org
2019-2020 YES! Teams
Carlton High School
- Attended the Race 2 Reduce Summit to learn about how to reduce water waste in their school.
- Replaced shower heads in their locker rooms with low flow units which helped reduce water by 5 gallons a minute to 1.5 gallons per minute.
- Educated students about not throwing away silverware with posters that they made.
- Participated in a virtual climate strike.
- Purchased new recycling bins for their football fields.
Discovery Woods Montessori – Brainerd
- Reducing plastic waste at lunch by 50%, from 60 pieces per day to 30 pieces per day and began recording results just as schools closed due to COVID-19.
- Toured Crow Wing County Recycling, Landfill and Hazardous Waste site and learned how important properly dealing with trash is to local water quality.
- Planned and prepared a plastic free homemade pizza lunch.
- Gave students a reusable snack bag along with tips on reducing single use plastics and sent a survey out to parents to see whether they used the reusable lunch bag or have changed their attitudes about plastic consumption. The results of the survey showed that of those surveyed, most (94%) have reduced or intend to reduce plastic consumption. 100% stated that the information sent home was informative, 94% have used or plan to use the reusable snack bag that was sent home.
- Educated the preschool through 5th grade classes about single-use plastics and reducing waste and included an aspect of plastic pollution causing leachate into the presentations.
- Created a video that was put out on social media to inform the public about single-use plastics, asking families to reduce their use.
Edina High School – New team!
- Planned on hosting the Project Earth Youth Climate Summit at their school
- Installing a 12-panel solar array at their school to increase public awareness of renewable energy within the community, commencing a 2-year fundraising campaign by Project Earth to raise over $20,000.
- Planting a pollinator garden on school grounds to improve bee habitat.
- Developed a composting informational kiosk in the school cafeteria to improve student composting of food.
Harbor City International School – Duluth – New team!
- Encouraging others to participate in the recycling and composting initiative.
- Worked to compost all of the food waste from school lunch and diverted approximately 27 lbs. of food waste from the landfill.
- Conducted programs educating students about pollinators and bats during the school year.
- Cleaned up 300 feet of Lake Superior shoreline during a beach sweep.
- Hosted multiple Earth week events for students.
- Conducted an energy audit to look at how they can reduce their energy consumption in their school.
- Hosted a food and clothing drive to support local groups related to their school.
- Planning on constructing planter boxes to grow a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables for school lunches.
Hopkins High School – New team!
- Developed a campaign to encourage the student body to be effective at recycling and composting waste within the school.
- Completing the B3 Benchmarking assessment of the school’s energy performance, identifying opportunities for saving energy for their school.
- Planting pollinator flowers on school grounds to improve bee and butterfly habitat.
Lac qui Parle Valley High School
- Restoring 38 acres of grassland to native prairie at their school through a state grant from Pheasants Forever for $38,000.
- Raised 10% of the $38,000 through local sponsorship.
- Planning to install educational signs, native bee homes, and benches to create a place for community members to visit, enjoy, and learn about the benefits of a native prairie.
- Recycled 20 lbs. of markers, 50 lbs. of holiday lights, and 320 lbs. of plastic bottles.
Mankato West High School
- Replaced 1,333 energy-hungry fluorescent tubes with 15-watt LED lighting in the school’s common areas as part of the team’s “RetroLED the Hallways” project, saving the school $5,125/year and reducing the amount of carbon emitted from energy produced to power the lights by an estimated 44.82 TONS of CO2/year.
- Taught students, families, and staff through a website-style presentation shared in the school’s newsletter about the RetroLED the Hallways project, economic/environmental benefits of lighting changes, and tips readers can use to reduce their carbon footprint at home.
Minnewaska Schools – New team!
- Created signs on composting, recycling, and trash so that students put waste in the proper place in the lunch room.
- Researching how to get solar panels for their school.
- Participating in aquatic invasive species surveying/kayaking this summer.
New London-Spicer Middle School
- Planned an Outdoor Science day where they teach elementary students about nature.
- Planned an energy week to educate Middle School students about saving water and conserving energy.
- Recycled 57 lbs of holiday lights.
- Harvested lettuce in their greenhouse every week for school lunches.
- Made beeswax food wraps and lip balms for pollinator and waste reduction awareness and sold them as a fundraiser.
- Participating in aquatic invasive species surveying/kayaking this summer.
New London-Spicer High School
- Harvested and spread native prairie seeds in their rain garden.
- Planted over 200 native prairie plugs in their rain garden.
- Planned an Eco Art Competition to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.
Northern Lights Community School – Warba
- Monitoring how many water bottles they are saving after they installed the hydration station (in two years over 15,559 single use water bottles have been saved).
- Participated in two public events to educate the public about Aquatic Invasive Species, specifically the Rusty Patch Crayfish.
- Continuing to compost all food waste at school lunches and delivering to a local farmer in exchange for manure for their greenhouse.
- Vermicomposting to help feed their aquatic turtles.
- Continuing to grow fruits and vegetables in their greenhouse and a garden.
- Planned on doing a lake clean-up event.
- Planned a Water Summit for their 5th Graders in their school to teach them about water quality issues including aquatic invasive species.
- Raised trout as a classroom project and released them into local streams to increase biodiversity.
Pelican Rapids – New team!
- Assessing their school & community to find out what water quality and other environmental challenges are present.
- Started a YES! group in Pelican Rapids to help the school and community with eco awareness, and to create a deeper understanding of the impacts on the Earth, good and bad.
- Researched and planned improvements to their school-wide recycling to improve results from only 1% of all plastic was being recycled in the Pelican Rapids High School to 20% or better.
- Purchased recycling bins and will be placed in easy to access areas.
- Determining results of impact next fall with school resumes.
- Informing approximately 420 non-YES! students and 100 staff at the Pelican Rapids High School about the benefit from the recycling bins and information provided next year.
Rockford Middle School – New team!
- Completing the B3 Benchmarking assessment of the school’s energy performance, identifying opportunities for saving energy for their school.
- Planning a prairie restoration/pollinator garden on school grounds.
Royalton High School
- Purchased a water quality testing kit and conducted 2 separate trainings concerning water quality testing.
- Planned to test the Mississippi and Platte rivers and 4 small tributaries to these rivers.
- Students signed up for various sites to monitor with the MPCA and were prepared to test and collect data prior to school closings due to COVID-19.
- Planned to build 3 E-bikes to demonstrate the use of alternative energies.
- Conducted three separate invasive species pulls in the school’s forest and removed over 200 buckthorn plants.
- Maintained school’s oil collection site.
- Participated in trail prep at Crane Meadows National Wildlife refuge.
- Toured Camp Ripley’s Environmental Center to learn about land and water conservation.
Sleepy Eye (Public and St. Mary’s) High Schools
- Hosted Energy Conservation Week including hands-on displays, daily announcements, and daily activities for students in grades 7-12.
- Collected 996 pounds of holiday lights for recycling, recovering approximately 647 pounds of copper, a quantity which would have required 405 tons of copper ore to produce.
- Taught adults and youth about water quality by leading three activity stations during Sleepy Eye’s annual Party in the Park event.
- Collected and reported water-quality data for a county drainage ditch and the Cottonwood River through the Friends of the Minnesota River Valley “River Watch” Project and MN Pollution Control Agency.
- Started planning interpretive signs about pollinators and native plants to display at prairie plots established by the YES! team.
- Planned improvements to the school cafeteria’s recycling system in order to reduce waste.
Springfield High School
- Collected 500 pounds of old or non-functioning holiday lights from the community to be recycled, reducing waste and encouraging energy-efficient alternatives like LED lights.
- Filled two large recycling bins with pop tabs collected throughout the year from the elementary and high school.
- Collected used mascara wands for the Appalachian Wildlife Refuge which cleans and reuses the wands to remove fly eggs and larva from animal fur and feathers.
- Planned to build bee houses and install them near school.
- Planned an organics composting project to reduce waste from the school cafeteria.
Virginia High School
- Participating in the adopt-a-drain program and possibly stenciling drains to raise awareness around storm water.
- Planning to plant trees around Silver Lake to continue their shoreline restoration efforts.
- Toured the St. Louis County Recycling Center to learn about waste.
- Purchased new recycling bins and carts for their school.
- Created videos of their tour of the St. Louis County Recycling Center to help educate students about their recycling efforts and planned a social media campaign.
Voyageurs Expeditionary High School
- Planning on creating rain gardens near their school to avoid yearly flooding.
- Working to reduce electricity usage in their school.
- Working with their school to reduce waste by recycling more.
Westbrook-Walnut Grove High School
- Planted native species in the school’s rain garden which the team created to improve aesthetics and water quality by reducing parking-lot runoff and erosion.
- Kept at least 360 plastic bags out of the landfill by cutting them into strips and weaving them to make colorful up-cycled bracelets. The team advertised the bracelets and sold 121 of them at basketball games in order to promote alternatives to throwing away materials and raise funds for improving the rain garden.
- Recycled over 4,200 pounds of waste by leading efforts in the school and community to collect aluminum cans, pop tabs, plastic bottles, and other items, which the team then sorted and documented in a database.
- Completed initial training to teach a water-quality education activity to elementary students.
- Individual students monitored their household’s electric meter, adopted strategies to increase energy efficiency at home, documented how much electricity was saved, and shared their results in discussions with family members and other students.
World Learner – Chaska – New team!
- Built 40 birdhouses from reclaimed materials to improve bird habitat on school grounds, as well as at student homes.
- Planting pollinator flowers on school grounds to improve bee habitat.
- Completing the B3 Benchmarking assessment of the school’s energy performance, identifying opportunities for saving energy for their school.
Yellow Medicine East High School
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Created a pollinator garden by the elementary to use for educational purposes.
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Worked on maintaining their community garden and orchard.
“It feels good to make a difference in the environment and bringing positive changes to our school.” –YES! Student
