Description and Activities: The 1 Planet Environmental Stewardship (Reduce-Reuse-Recycle) project will take place in conjunction with the “PANDOS Defend the Sacred Pow Wow 2019” and will include two aspects:

(1) The recycling percentage rate part will deploy two each of three designs of combination trash and recycle bins. Monitoring the success rate of each of the various designs will allow recommendations for successful combination bin arrangements.

(2) Educating people to become habituated to employ reusable water bottles in lieu of single-use disposable water bottles. This be implemented as follows:

Obtaining a sufficient quantity of quality reusable water bottles that will be distributed at the Pow Wow between September 26-28 for free to participants who agree to participate in a series of surveys three times during the year. Participants who choose not to participate in the surveys will be able to purchase the water bottles for a nominal donation. We will also obtain and implement a set of sanitary water refill stations for Pow Wow attendees to fill their bottles. By obtaining funding to defray the end user’s cost for the reusable bottle, the suggested donation will be equivalent to an average price of a disposable water bottle.

By subsidizing these water bottles, we can acquaint people with their long-term value.

How we will measure the project:

Aspect (1): All six trash and recycle receptacles will be collected and evaluated at least twice daily over the course of the event by trained volunteers.

A record of the success rate of each of the three designs will be kept, both by counting recyclables in the trash receptacle and trash in the recycle receptacle.

Aspect (2): An initial survey will be conducted each of the two full days of the Pow Wow (Sept 27-28) to ascertain the initial reception of the concept. Subsequently, those attendees that agreed to participate in the study will complete three surveys at 4, 8, and 12 months after the Pow Wow. The surveys will be online and participants will receive email invitations.

The Root Cause:

The consumption of single use plastics has contributed to what has become a problem of significant pollution worldwide. In 2018 BSI created a social media project, “Surviving Without Plastic” in an effort to contribute to the education around this issue. BSI would like to extend this outreach and education by implementation of the 1 Planet project. During the last two Defend the Sacred Pow Wow events we anecdotally observed the enormous amount of trash generated by single-use water bottles. Through education with a hands-on experiential component, we hope to influence people to eliminate single-use plastic from their habits, beginning with water bottles.

Geographic areas: Wasatch Front Metropolitan area, extended reach to Native American and rural communities.