Chase Loveless is a third-year student at Stuart Hall High School located in San Francisco, California, and at his young age he has managed to raise awareness in his community about the environmental impact of batteries, thus safeguarding marine life in the Bay Area.
His passion for sustainability led Chase to successfully organize a battery drive within his K-12 community, collecting over 70 pounds of used batteries, equivalent to over a thousand individual AA batteries.
The project not only prevented potential damage to the Bay, but also demonstrated the tangible impact of local youth initiatives.
?San Francisco is surrounded by water and the bay is an integral part of my community. Marine life that thrives in the bay is exposed to toxic chemicals by illegally disposing of harmful products, most commonly batteries. My project aimed to raise awareness about the toxicity of batteries and their negative impact on the environment,” said the young man belonging to the Climate Leader Fellowship program.
Chase said he brainstormed how he could help protect the Bay Area, and decided he would hold a used battery collection throughout his K-12 community.
Once the collection was finished, he said, he properly disposed of the batteries at a local recycling company called Recology. ?I collected over 70 pounds of batteries that could have ended up in the Pacific Ocean if they had not been disposed of properly.?
But not everything was easy, because according to Loveless, the biggest challenge he had to face was connecting with his community so that others knew about his project.
?I created a social media page where I posted vital information about the project, with updates and informative posts educating about the toxic chemicals found in batteries and the effects they have on the environment. In addition, I published another informative slide that was projected daily on the television screens in our school,” he said.
?This allowed more students who are not present on social networks to connect. This helped me maximize the amount of batteries we collected from homes throughout San Francisco. The batteries that were collected were a testament to how our community can come together to help stop climate change.
Chase Loveless achieved his goal through the Climate Leaders Fellowship, a leadership program provided by Rustic Pathways, which he said helped him realize that he is a person who can create change, even if the challenge seems daunting.
?I'm so proud that everyone is coming together to get rid of this common household item. The 70 pounds of batteries we collected are equivalent to over a thousand individual AA batteries. "This is a huge amount of batteries that could have affected my environment, and I'm proud of how I used my tight-knit community to bring about change."
The Climate Leaders Scholarship is a teen enrichment program that leads high school students to research the effects of climate change in their own communities and find ways to combat the problem locally.
The virtual volunteer program is offered in collaboration between Stanford University's Deliberative Democracy Lab and the Rustic Pathways Foundation.
Students can register for the Climate Leaders Scholarship in the following link, https://rusticpathways.com/young-climate-leaders-fellowship, the program is accepting applications until February 4.
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