Our Solutions

 1. Write to the Environmental Advisory Committee on the Laramie City Council.  Here's the letter we wrote and shared at the April 1st, 2021 meeting: 

Mrs. Ommen’s Class  

Third Grade Gifted and Talented Education 

Spring Creek Elementary School  

Laramie, WY 

2-22-2021 

Dear Laramie City Council Members,  

We are very thankful for your service and we all feel that living and growing up in Laramie is a privilege and a gift.  We have a concern that we would like you to consider that would make our community even better.  We strongly feel that the trash in the East part of Laramie (near Laramie High School and especially near the Walmart) should be contained and removed more consistently.  We feel this is important for several reasons and we have suggestions.   

We feel that the trash near the East part of town has gotten out of control and that is detrimental to our community for many reasons.  First, the trash should be removed near the Walmart for three reasons.  One, if it isn’t contained, it is blown by the wind directly into the Pilot Hill natural area.  This causes plastic litter to contaminate a beautiful area that many citizens enjoy.  Second, it could lead to microplastics that could contaminate the ecosystem, including our watershed.  Third, that area is the first part of town many people see who are driving in on Grand Avenue, and all the trash makes a horrible first impression.  Many people are visiting Laramie in order to go to the high school.  The trash that is currently littering that area of town is giving a bad impression of our community that doesn’t accurately reflect our pride and love for nature.  

We have some suggestions that we would like you to consider.  We hope that fencing could be improved to catch the trash that is blown from the Walmart area.  A volunteer or business-led group could help monitor and periodically gather up that litter.  We suggest signage in the Walmart parking area to increase awareness of littering.  As a group, we will be advocating ideas with the Walmart directly to incentivize broader use of reusable bags. Also, as a group, we will be organizing a volunteer trash pick-up day to jump start the pickup of litter in this area.  We will collect all the trash we can on Earth Day, 2021.   

Again, thank you for your service and we look forward to working together to improve this area of our community.   

Sincerely,  

Third Grade GATE at Spring Creek Elementary  


2. Adopt the land near the East side of town as a GATE program and clean it up regularly.  We are committed to cleaning up this area three times per year as a program. 






3.  Study the source of the litter. 



4. Build a fence between Walmart's parking lot, a major source of plastic litter according to our data, and the surrounding natural spaces. The Sierra Club has indicated interest in partnering with us on this idea. 


5. Use less single-use plastics and reduce use of receipts.  We are still brainstorming about how to make this a feasible solution in our community. 


6. Put more trash bins in the Walmart parking lot, anchoring them and using secure lids to resist wind scattering litter. We will be writing to the manager of Walmart about this idea and the idea of more fencing to catch the trash. 


7. Challenge other schools to also adopt littered areas! 



Comments

  1. These are wonderful, well thought out solutions! I love the idea of building a coalition of Laramie Litter Elimination Leaders across all schools!

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