Eco Dude: ‘Trojan Goats’ take top prize at Greenlight Awards

DAVID POGUE

By DAVID POGUE

Honestly, Eco Dude hasn’t been feeling so chipper lately. 

You spend all your waking hours thinking about how to be a better citizen, how to reduce carbon pollution, how to save the world — and then some president takes a chainsaw to the EPA, USDA, NOAA, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. In six weeks, he undoes years of environmental progress. He literally orders all electric-car chargers in federal buildings to be disabled! (Whatever happened to the whole Republican “Let the markets decide” thing?)

But then Sunday happened.

At the Hotel MTK Mount Kisco (which donated the space and equipment), 55 kids from nearby high schools filled three ballrooms. Each teen team brought an ingenious idea for fixing eco problems.

These were the finals of the 10th annual Greenlight Awards, a competition produced by Bedford 2030. The 23 finalist teams had five minutes to present their ideas to four-judge panels, and then five minutes to answer questions. They had to prove that they’d had buy-in from adult leaders and administrators; that they’d actually launched their programs locally; and that they’d measured meaningful results.

One team from John Jay High School, concerned about the waste inherent in the fast-fashion movement, set up a series of clothing swaps — including swap racks right in the school hallways. Another John Jay team conducted free sewing workshops, teaching attendees to make new clothes from old ones, and wound up the program with a fashion show. 

Three girls from ELOC — the Environmental Leaders of Color, a multi-high-school club — set up collection containers for used cooking oil, and then launched a months-long awareness campaign.

In their school cafeteria in Yonkers, Giovanna Leiva and Marjorye Paulino were aghast at the 40 plastic water bottles going into the trash every day. So they bought and installed the cafeteria’s very first recycling bin. 

A tiny effort? Not when you consider the odds. Their supervisor was fired (for unrelated reasons), their principal was hard to reach, and no funds were available. They even emptied the bin themselves. 

A quartet of ELOC guys were becoming alarmed by the vast quantities of goose poop on the New Rochelle High School campus (it’s across from two lakes). The walkways to school had become a minefield — and, in this time of bird flu, actually dangerous. “There’s a children’s playground right next to it, so everybody’s at risk,” says Shia Anderson. “And every time someone steps in it and then they walk in their house, they’re exposing their whole family.” 

They measured the poop and plan to work with city officials to form a disposal plan. “Someone’s gotta do it,” Anderson says.

Shawn Wei and Junjun Li wanted to tackle the microplastics problem. Fun fact, there’s now enough microplastic in the average person’s brain to form a plastic spoon. 

These two chemistry nerds developed a new nanoscale chemical composite — Fe3O4@TiO2-Ag, in case you were wondering — that they say can break down plastic 170,000 times faster than natural processes. They have presented their findings to the New York State Department of Environmental Protection.

“Over the years, there’s been no hesitation to adopt the latest trending technologies: websites, apps and social media, the use of AI,” notes Louise Alverson, who organizes and runs the whole shebang. 

A case in point: BloomAIR, brought to us by a Rye Country Day Team. It’s a sort of birdhouse/flower garden — with solar-powered sensors that track which pollinators come by at which temperatures and humidity levels. And TrashView, from another RCDS team, uses AI computer vision to distinguish trash from recyclables with 97 percent accuracy.

At noon, the 12 judges’ scores were tallied, and six teams won cash prizes. The first-place winners ($500) were 11th-graders Sofia Kelly and Ada Caccamise from Haldane High School in Cold Spring. On the scale of public speakers, their energy and charisma were somewhere in the Steve Jobs/Barack Obama range. 

They’d converted three patches of invasive mugwort on the school grounds to gorgeous, native-plant gardens that attract butterflies, bees and birds. The goal was to teach the community about the importance of native plants.

On the face of it, none of that was especially revolutionary. The genius part was the marketing of their message.

“It’s so hard to get kids to pay attention to anything, honestly,” says Kelly. “So we brought goats.”

Instead of clearing away the mugwort with stinky machinery, they rented two adorable goats (named Chocolate and Chip) for two, two-week periods, using $5,000 in grant money. The goats generated a huge amount of attention — from kids, teachers and parents — which Kelly and Caccamise exploited for educational purposes. The goats, in other words, were Trojan horses for the message.

“The project is not about encouraging people to get goats,” Kelly says, “It’s the attraction of the goats that was so engaging. And it’s about education.”

The girls sold goat T-shirts to raise money, created a website, ran stories in the school and town papers, made presentations to middle- and high-school parents, and taught classes on native plants to elementary and middle-school classes. Every class got to visit the goats. “We even introduced 3- and 4-year-olds from the local Montessori preschool to the topic, likely for the very first time in their lives,” says Kelly.

According to follow up surveys, the goat stunt was a tremendously effective educational gambit. On the question, “Why are the goats on campus?” Ninety-seven percent of elementary-schoolers chose the right answer, “To remove invasive plants and plant a pollinator garden.” Three percent chose the answer, “Because they’re so cute.”

As for eco-despair, Kelly and Caccamise have already learned about countering obstacles. 

“Just getting the goats on campus was so incredibly difficult. We had funding, then it was taken away. The project was canceled — multiple times,” Kelly says. “But still making it happen, despite all of that opposition — that’s what gives me hope. As long as you have that tenacity and the will, anything’s possible.”

“Look around you. Not everything is destroyed yet,” adds Caccamise. “We have to fight for what we have!”

“As long as you’re always doing something, as long as you’re always trying to make even just a little difference — that’s how you stay hopeful,” Kelly says.

Eco Dude is taking notes.