WHAT I LEARNED AT THE NY SUN WORKS YOUTH CONFERENCE BY AUGUST MILLER
Have you ever been to the NY Sunworks Youth Conference? If so, what did you learn there? NY Sunworks is a non-profit business that holds a Youth Conference at the Javits Center in West Manhattan every year. For the 15th annual Youth Conference, I attended and learned a lot about many schools doing different experiments for the past year. This article will cover three of these amazing presentations. So let’s plunge into the world of hydroponics!
For the first presentation, I will be covering the Harbor Middle School (HMS) about their idea of how the age of swiss chard plants affects their salt tolerance. HMS students Levi and Hadley attempted to answer this question by using baby swiss chard and adult swiss chard in their experiment, putting them in salt water for 6-7 weeks (they meant the 67 joke for younger audiences) to see which grows better. After 6-7 weeks passed, the results were clear: adult swiss chard grew significantly better than baby swiss chard did, to the point where the baby swiss chard started to wither and die. HMS’s experiment was a complete success. Based on this knowledge, future plans are to create little floating gardens on the Hudson River filled with adult swiss chard. All in all, this was one of the most successful experiments that I saw at the conference.
For the second presentation, yours truly will be covering PS.34’s experiment about loofahs possibly having the ability to be used as a growing substrate. PS.34’s students Isla, Grayson, and Blake tested this theory by planting basil into a loofah for several weeks. After the time had completely passed, the basil grew big and strong and got to fulfill its potential. They did this experiment because rockwool can’t be reused, but they wanted to know if a loofah can even grow plants and then later be reused to continue growing plants. If so, everyone across the globe should use a loofah instead of rockwool. However, if it does not work, they can just say that you can use a loofah in addition to rockwool to grow plants in a hydroponics lab.
For the final presentation, I shall be covering a special presentation made by the CEO of the Javits Center Joyce Leveston. Joyce covered all of the sustainable activities that they have at the Javits center, such as beehives, a green roof, and many more! They also talked about how when it rains, they capture the water to reuse for future needs. Their goal for the future of sustainability is spreading these ways to other parts of the NYC community so we can all be sustainable and combat the challenges ahead related to climate change.
In conclusion, the NY Sunworks conference showed me important sustainable ideas that we can make the world better and can combat climate change and other fossil fuel disasters. All in all, the most interesting presentation was from HMS since theirs was the most thoughtful and they sufficiently explained what their plans were for the future. So, what would you do for the future of sustainability?
