Student project turns grease into green energy solutions and green jobs Cassandra Lin, USA

An award-winning recycling project in Westerly, Rhode Island, has been collecting more than 36,000 gallons of waste cooking oil a year. By converting the grease into heating fuel, or biodiesel, the project is bringing an estimated value of US$60,000 of alternative energy to needy families in the local community.

The initiative began in 2008 when the now 13-year-old Cassandra Lin set out to improve the sustainability problems in her local community. Inspired by a project she saw at an environmental expo in the University of Rhode Island, in which used cooking oil was refined into biodiesel as a source of alternative energy, Lin launched the Turn Grease into Fuel (TGIF) recycling programme. (Biodiesel is formed from a reaction between vegetable oil and an alcohol like methanol.)

TGIF encourages residents and restaurants to bring their used-cooking oil to the town transfer station to be recycled. TGIF’s partner, Grease Co., then collects and delivers the grease to a biodiesel refiner which processes it into biodiesel fuel.

Thanks to TGIF, used cooking oil has now become a money-spinning product, generating green energy solutions and green jobs. Lin is proud of the success of TGIF, "especially when I could show that my project has helped people and the environment at the same time,” she says.

Indeed, the success rate of the grease project is impressive; more than 120,000 litres of biodiesel will be generated each year, offsetting 250 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Lin hopes over the next few years other youth can help the project to expand across the United States.

The innovative teenager and her team of five seventh-graders have also influenced environmental legislation, persuading the local council to place a grease receptacle at the transfer station where residents donate their used cooking oil. And because of the TGIF project, Rhode Island now mandates that all businesses which consume cooking oil have to recycle the grease. Lin’s family are an integral part of her inspiration to conserve the environment and promote sustainable green solutions. TGIF is a result of the Westerly Innovations Network (WIN), a community service organization started by her father, Jason Lin, in 2002. It is also run by students, including Lin’s older brother, Alex, who has earned numerous accolades for his own initiatives. “I want to make an impact,” says Lin, and indeed she has. In 2005 she spoke as a delegate to the UNEP Tunza International Youth Conference held in South Korea. She was named one of America's top ten youth volunteers for 2011 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, winning a national Prudential Spirit of Community Award for her outstanding volunteer service. At UNEP’s upcoming TUNZA conference in Bandung, Indonesia, Lin wants to help children understand what a sustainable lifestyle is, and encourage them to make simple but critical changes, such as buying e-books rather than paperback publications.

Lin who draws her inspiration from passion for the environment and conservation believes, “it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, anyone can make a difference”! Her dream project for the future is to design a model of a zero-waste community. Lin will be one of over 1,400 youth who will shape and sharpen the position of youth in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), or Rio+20, that will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012

Singing for Marine Ecosystems Ta’Kaiya Blaney, Canada

Music has been described as the universal language and is frequently used to focus attention on important global issues. That is why it is important for Ta’Kaiya Blaney, a young Canadian girl of aboriginal descent who is using music to bring attention to pressing environmental concerns. “Shallow Waters” is one of the five songs she has written to raise awareness about a proposed oil pipeline between Alberta’s ‘tar sands’, where there are major oil deposits, and the town of Kitimat in British Columbia.

According to some environmental campaigners, the ‘tar sands’ reserves, which hold an equivalent of more than 175 billion barrels of crude oil, could become the largest and most destructive industrial project in human history. They point out that the extraction process is estimated to result in gasoline that carries a burden of at least five times more carbon dioxide then would be released for conventional "sweet crude" oil production and is causing massive deforestation.

The proposed pipeline through the northwest coast of British Columbia could become a potential source of oil spills which would put fragile marine ecosystems at serious risk and perhaps end the traditional way of life and heritage for many coastal aboriginal communities.

“My culture is important to me,” she explains. “The pipeline would carry the most corrosive oil through beautiful pristine places, destroying our culture.”

The ten-year-old, a devoted activist from Vancouver, began her environmental musical project after learning that sea otters are under threat from oil. She has sung at several events, festivals and schools, including the Comox Earth Day festival, Gathering Voices Environmental Film Festival in Bella Bella and the Marine Protected Areas Congress in Victoria.

“The lifeless ocean, black not blue I didn't help, but deep down I knew,” she sings in ‘Shallow Waters”.

But music is not the only channel for voicing concern. Ta’Kaiya has also put political pressure on legislators through an open letter to Canada’s members of Parliament, urging them to vote in favour of the bill against the construction of the pipeline.

“We have a chance to turn this around before it is too late,” she stresses.

Ta’Kaiya feels that it is important for children and youth to have a voice in sustainability and she will be attending the TUNZA International Children and Youth conference this month in Bandung, Indonesia, primarily for the opportunity to learn from and share ideas about sustainability, especially in relation to ecosystems.

“I would like to return to Canada with a huge new network of child and youth environmentalists, like myself, working on the same goal, save the environment, a green future with social justice.”

“At the TUNZA conference I will learn about youth who have spoken up in different ways about issues that will save the planet such as a green economy, sustainable living, social justice and environmental protection.”

She has been also chosen as the only child among 20 members of the “We Canada Champions”--a group trying to get Canadian leaders to promote sustainability and social justice at the upcoming Rio+20 conference on sustainable development in Brazil next June.

The video for “Shallow Waters” has been viewed 58,000 times since its release in February this year, leaving no doubt that the young activist is a force to be reckoned with in the movement for enhanced environmental protection.