HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuron Expositor, 2009-08-05, Page 15The Huron Expositor-, • August 5, 2009 Page 15
News
Teen bringing her environmentally -friendly ideas
to Bright Green Youth conference in Denmark
Dan Schwab
4111111111.11111.
Next week, 18 -year-old Gwynne
Burgess will join 500 teenagers from
around the world at the forefront of
the youth movement to create a more
environmentally -friendly world, dur-
ing the Bright Green Youth confer-
ence in Sonderborg, Denmark.
The Seaforth resident . and recent
graduate of Central Huron Second-
ary School received the offer to at-
tend the all -expenses paid trip from
Aug. 8-12 from the Ontario Science
Centre (OSC).
Burgess attended the OSC's Sci-
ence School during the first semester
of the 2008-09 school year in Toronto,
earning three Grade 12 science cred-
its.
Along with the regular course work,
urgess participated in a cross -cur -
project with the g.oal of
�ar groupp ro
coming up with a plan to lower the
carbon footprint of the OSC.
Her team proposed the installation•
of a water system that would reroute
the water in the sinks that patrons
used to wash their hands to be used
in the facility's restroom toilets.
"It allows for less filtration and
less energy wasted on stuff that re-
ally doesn't need to be done," Bur-
gess explains. "So we presented that
idea to the Science Centre design
team and they were really interest-
ed in hoping to take. our design and
work with the next group of Science
Centre students next semester and
hopefully make something happen.
It's a multi-million dollar project so
it won't, happen in the near future,
but hooiefully that may happen even-
tually."
After completing her classes and re-
turning to CHSS to complete Grade
12, Burgess was contacted by some
of the OSC teachers who singled out
a select few former students to see if
they'd be interested in heading. over-
seas to the youth conference in Den-
mark.
Burgess jumped at the opportunity
and began posting ideas . on the con-
ference's website about some of the
issues she hoped to discuss with oth-
. ers her age from different countries
around the world.
"Being in rural Huron County, I
wanted to focus on agriculture be-
cause I feel agriculture has a huge
carbon footprint and the community
doesn't really take that very well,"
she says.
Some of her ideas focused on pre-
venting livestock runoff from con-
taminating waterways, through the
use of improved irrigation and drain-
age systems.
"I think that's something I'd like to
see how other people are managing
and try to figure out something to do
with that," she says.
Methane gas pollution emitted
from cows and
sheep may also
be curbed by a
modification of
their diets, she
suggests.
"There's so
much that can
be done and we
see all these
great, innova-
tive ideas and
it really makes
you want to get
involved and
make them
happen," she
says. "Because
they totally
will happen
and it's exciting
to kind of be at
the forefront of
that."
As one of only
three Cana-
dian teenagers
attending the Denmark Conference,
Burgess will be meeting and collabo-
rating for four days with other stu-
dents from around the world, work-
ing on practical solutions before the
COP15 United Nations climate
change conference in Copenhagen in
December.
Burgess will also take back the
ideas to the OSC and present them
Gwynne Burgess, centre, shown here at the Ontario Science
Centre's Science School, was selected by the school to attend
the Bright Green Youth conference in Denmark from Aug. 8-12.
to the next group of Grade 12 stu-
dents enrolled in the Science School
this September.
"I just hope that, by me coming
back and presenting these ideas that
it's just branching out and affecting
more people," she says.
In the fall, Burgess plans to attend
the University of Waterloo to study
systems design engineering.
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