Green Stewards Camp is offered to Communities in Schools youth and presented by Keep Austin Beautiful and the City of Austin Watershed Protection Department. The two-day outdoor environmental education camp focuses on Austin watersheds, the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer, water quality, recycling, litter impact, green gardening including native plants, beneficial bugs and compost, and other related topics. Communities in Schools youth learn about these topics with hands-on science investigations, study trips to the local creek, exploring the on-site garden, and taking part in small scale service projects to cleanup and beautify the nearby creek.
 

Dates: 3-day camp offered for 6 weeks during June and July
Time: 9:30am -12:00pm
Place: The Green Classroom, located @ 1701 Briar Street

A Peak Inside 3 Days of Green Stewards Camp
DAY 1
Objective: Campers learn about surface water in Austin and the impact of litter and recycling on our environment.

Waste Watchers:
    • make a difference with a Creek Cleanup and explore the creek with a Scavenger Hunt.
    • discover just how long litter lingers and the impact it has on our watershed and habitats.
    • create art from trash with a Recycled Art Project.

Watershed Protectors: 
    • determine how water flows with Watershed Models.
    • build a yummy Edible Aquifer treat that illustrates the layers of an Aquifer.

DAY 2
Objective: Campers learn about the benefits of natural gardening and how it keeps our water clean.

Green Gardening Basics: 
    • cook up healthy snacks harvested from the garden.
    • identify and sample common herbs.
    • learn about vermi-composting by touching worms and making mud pudding.

Green Gardening in the Garden:
    • maintain a compost bin to understand the basics of compost.
    • weed, plant seeds, and harvest plants.
    • search for and identify beneficial bugs in the garden.

DAY 3
Objective: Campers head out for a fieldtrip to learn more about our trash and how it is managed at landfills and recycling plants.

Campers 2008 Tour the Allied Waste Recycling Plant and left in awe of the 8 tons+ of recyclables that are sorted and bundled at the site.

Campers 2008 visit Cycled Plastics to observe the next stage of the recycling process where bales of plastic are transformed into marketable plastic pellets.
  

THANK YOU Allied Waste, Cycled Plastics, Waste Management and Texas Disposal Systems for hosting Green Stewards Camp fieldtrips and for their commitment to raising awareness about our waste stream and the importance of recycling.

Additional thanks to Communities in Schools for their ongoing commitment to learning about the environment and for their valuable collaboration.