Generation Green
2021 - 2022 Award Winners
Best Project
Grade 7 & 8 Category
Great Work as the student demonstrated a lot of initiative to advertise and ensure his school participated in the active challenge. Well Done and Congratulations on winning the best project in the Gr. 7/8 category!
The Active Transportation Network
Prassan Aggarwal
This year’s theme for Generation Green was active transportation. I designed a school challenge so that I could involve the youth in this amazing initiative and create awareness about GHG emissions at the same time. The challenge was kept simple to encourage maximum participation. My school principal was very enthusiastic and wholeheartedly supported me. For one month, students were encouraged to track the number of times they did active transportation, the distance they travelled when they did active transportation, and the type of vehicle they have, such as electric, gas, hybrid, etc. At the beginning of March, everyone had one week to email me or enter all their data in the Google form and submit it to me. Almost 50% (200/400) of students sent in completed forms.
Best Project
Grade 9 Category
It was interesting to follow your learning that a barrier to active transportation is safety. This makes sense but was certainly not something I had thought of before. Congratulations on winning the best project in the Gr. 9 category!
Curactive
Keerthana Srinivasan
For my project, I am focusing on urban design, and ideating ways to improve greenhouse gas emissions in my community. My idea, Curactive, is an urban biking system (run by an app), where people can “rent” out bikes with trackers, and deposit them in secured bike racks around the city, separated from one another by ten kilometres. People will only be able to unlock a bike from the bike rack by confirming they live in that particular municipality. This app will determine whether or not it is safe for people to bike/walk. My intention for this project was to have people feel safe when they walk out of their houses, especially those who need to commute to school or work.
Best Project
Grade 10 Category
The website was a great idea for sharing your project. It was a great idea to expand beyond a personal change to potentially include others. Congratulations on winning the best project in the Gr. 10 category!
Joshua Creek Carpool Program (JCCP)
Aryan Rangnekar, Harsukrit Pall,
Arjun Sandhu, Nicholas Chung
As a group, we wanted to make the conversion from simply driving to and from school, to a mix of carpooling and walking. We estimated that this would divide our emissions by 4 as we would be using one car for all of us. First, we came up with the idea to make a carpool program. Then, we concluded that the best way to make the carpool program was with a website. We added information to the website about why people should carpool and join the program. Finally, we created forms that allow people to volunteer or register their children for the program.
Best Project
Grade 11 Category
Creating Safer Streets and Reducing GHG Emissions
Dan Xiu Lo & Dan Fen Lo
Our project is about creating a safer street for students and pedestrians combined to and from our secondary school. It is also about the importance of reducing GHG emissions and recognizing that it can be done if one is willing to put in the effort. This project was unique in that it combined measuring personal transportation-related GHG emissions while also recommending active transportation infrastructure (bike lanes) and changes to the street design to encourage transportation behaviour change. The recommendation to introduce bike lanes in the community is a great start; It was a great idea to compare the GHG between trips using different modes over a period of time.
Congratulations on winning the best project in the Gr. 11 category!
Most Impact Award
Eco Week
Maija Fotr
The goal of Eco Week was to encourage students and their families or just people in their Community to try to walk, bike, carpool or use public transit instead of driving in cars to reduce the amount of emissions. From May 21st to May 25th I hosted an event (AKA eco week) where students could send me photos, videos or any other proof of them doing things like walking, biking, carpooling or taking public transit to school to be entered in a draw to win a prize.
A great initiative involving a large number of participants and reaching a substantial impact! Excellent ideas involving a large number of participants. Congratulations on winning the “Most Impact” award!
Most Creative Award
Active Transportation can
be Recreational
Aditi Datla
I intend to reduce GHG emissions by encouraging others to ride a bike to school. I will achieve this goal by combining something many kids enjoy, video games, and active transportation. Every meter travelled would give another 10 minutes to play the game, a lengthy bike travel could also give rewards in game and create a fun system for all students. To begin the project, I first outlined the basis of the app. I decided on something simple, like an RPG game you play to defeat monsters that could be simply pixel-animated. After, I made a couple of pieces of concept art to make the game more visual and decided on how the game would connect to active transportation. I eventually decided on measuring by meters travelled on a bike to time spent on the app, 1 meter for every 10 minutes on the app. Later I created an infographic to advertise and outline the app, then used my school trips to measure how much GHG emissions I could reduce by going on a bike compared to a car.
Well thought out with the video game and this could be used for all ages. Congratulations on winning the “Most Creative” award!
Most Innovative Award
Transportation Scavenger Hunt
Mohammed Torkmani, Shirin Batra, Daisy Zhao
Our project was a scavenger hunt where we created clues in the form of riddles and hid them around our school. We encouraged our friends and other students to partake in the scavenger hunt and prepared prizes for the participants. The clues led them to the final destination, which included both a physical and virtual copy of a map of Oakville. The map includes bus routes and select attractions that we thought would appeal to students and their families. Snacks were also handed out at the final destination and roughly 100 people were involved in the project, including those that stumbled upon the treasure hunt on accident! Our goal for this project was to encourage students at our school to take the bus and raise awareness for active transportation.
This is an excellent project that is thorough, fun, creative and thoughtful. Raising awareness is a great way to encourage people to use their cars less. Lack of knowledge is often a big factor in preventing significant change. Congratulations on winning the “Most Innovative” award!
Honourable Mentions
Rain Shields
Lucy Bognar & Caleb Kozsurek
We decided that we would create overhead rain shields so people could get the motivation to walk to school even on rainy days. Using transportation creates a lot of emissions as we burn a lot of fossil fuels. Many people think that a 3 km drive isn’t impactful however it still creates a lot of GHG emissions. For the rain shields, we added containers that would collect the rain and would be used for Burlington’s water supply as well. This would encourage more people to walk even if the weather isn’t in their favour.
The easy-to-understand education about the impact on the environment can inspire others. Good personal reflections and identification of barriers to active transportation with great extrapolation beyond your own involvement and impact. Congratulations on being an Honourable Mention!
Patched Up
Rida Salahuddin, Claire Jung, Sara Kabir, Zainab Arif,
Shiza Zaidi
Our goal was to collect and repurpose clothing for impoverished refugees, donating the clothing we make to organizations that support them. On the next step of our journey, we’re starting to learn how to sew and practicing our refurbishing skills! Through Zoom, our team has had countless meetings to discuss logistics, outreach and planning to secure success. We have successfully collected 400 pounds of clothing over the course of 4 weekends in November. After successfully collecting over 600 pounds of donated clothing, we reduced over 5000 GHG emissions. We learned a lot in terms of how much goes into the collecting, time and weighing process in order to get out the final total. We recently dropped off our clothing successfully! We made sure that we were not driving around and collecting clothing so we opted for asking and using a shopping cart that we borrowed to stay in the active transportation theme.
There was imagination used within this project to speak to a current state situation as well as a potential global future state. It is evident that they put a lot of thought into finding a charity and recognizing that not all charities will accept clothing donations. Also, this initiative is very timely. Their project began in November, and now that Ukrainians are arriving in Canada with very few belongings, organizations such as Patched Up can really make a difference. Instead of disposing of unsuitable clothing that had been donated, they learned how to sew and restyle this clothing so that it too could be diverted from landfill. Congratulations on being an Honourable Mention!
EcoCyclix
Ali Abdalaal, Sambahv Athreya, Hasan Zaman, Zeeshan Bombaywal
Our project was to reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere through a futuristic and easy-to-use method – friendly mode of transport. The way this project works is by calculating the amount of metres you bike, and then converting it to cyclix coins. Get active with our bike chip! After using our app you can start getting active wherever and whenever your want! After racking up a good amount of miles, grow your crypto account! Earn 1 Cyclix coin with every 500 meters you bike! Cash in and be eligible to earn things like NFTs, cryptocurrency, etc. The sky’s the limit!
Encouraging exercise along with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is brilliant. Congratulations on being an Honourable Mention!
Reducing GHG emissions and encouraging active transportation through safety
Hana Ansari, Madelyn Caskie, Sophie Cournoyer, Sage Hagerman
Our goal was to tackle the issue of safety by making our school parking lot safer, along with education about active transportation. To encourage active transportation through education, our group created online posts about the benefits of active transportation and how to achieve it. We have been spreading the knowledge through our personal social media, but are working on having them put up as posters around our school to reach more of our community. Our final action was to make our community safer to make active transportation an option. We are in the process of organizing a student volunteer group to cross-guard in our school’s parking lot. This will make safer traffic and roads so students don’t feel endangered when walking or biking to school.
It is often the barriers to choosing active transportation that dissuade people from using it more often. The use of personal experience, bringing in family members and then using social media for the broader community was an excellent idea. Congratulations on being an Honourable Mention!
CSI: Car(bon) Scene Investigation
Venya Balaji
Population density in Oakville has considerably risen in the past decade, with rush hour traffic seeing
significant vehicular congestion around school start and end times, an increase in slow-moving as well as stop & go traffic, all leading contributors to high GHG emissions. My goal through this project is to raise awareness around the impact of GHG emissions caused by student-related transportation.
Carpooling is a great option in a suite of options to reduce vehicular congestion. Considerable work and research were carried out on this project, including identifying that many of the quantitative goals are theoretical based on certain assumptions. Congratulations on being an Honourable Mention!