[Music]
so I'm sure that all of you have heard
of Superman before right yes yeah so
today I'm going to tell a story about
Superman starring myself and before you
guys make any questions about the Jo
Judgment of my parents that's not
actually me this is Photoshop just
making that
clear I'm going to tell a story about
how a group of fifth graders found a way
to heat the homes of 150
families this short video might give you
a glimpse into my topic I want you to
tell me in 30 seconds Cassandra you've
got this system called TGIF which is not
what we think it is you turn grease into
fuel give me 30 seconds on
it um well my friends and I we created a
sustainable system to collect waste
cooking oil have it converted into
biodiesel Fuel and distributed it to our
local media families who need heat you
you're amazing first of all you keep
better time than a TV anchor does you
and your team members received the 2010
president environmental youth award you
two are
fantastic so I saw some of you guys have
a habit of looking at the Dow index in
the bottom so I hope you guys made money
that day too bad this wasn't real time
my story started in October of 2008
after I visited the Energy Solutions
expo at the University of rad Island
there I came across the very problematic
of global problematic issue of global
warming melting ice caps could cause sea
levels to rise an average of 2 to 6 feet
by 2100 Manhattan might even look like
this The Next Century well if this
happens I guess there'll be no traffic
and you might even kayak to work
at the same Expo I talked to Mr Ryan
Mason of Mason's biodiesel and yeah yeah
I I realized I was a lot cuter back then
just ignore
that and he told me that you could
convert waste cooking oil which people
pour down the drain or throw in their
trash into biodiesel an alternative
energy that could help slow down global
warming at the same time I read an
article in the newspaper about how
families in my own town couldn't afford
to heat their homes Charities were
running out of funds for emergency
heating assistance one charity started
an initiative called the $ one makes a
difference campaign and in this campaign
residents donated $1 each week to go
towards emergency heating assistance I
thought that this was a good idea but it
wasn't sustainable and I wanted to help
so I got together with a group of my
friends and we started hosting weekly
meetings like
this during these meetings and am missst
all the food we uh brainstormed ideas
ideas on how we could help we figured if
we could get people to recycle their
waste cooking oil then we could turn it
into biodiesel Fuel and help heat the
homes of needy families then we
discussed a few business
strategies our first strategy was to
identify our allies even Superman has
allies and we figured it was important
to find who could benefit from our
program and would want to help us
environmentalists were on our side
because we're helping the environment
restaurants because we give them a PR
bonus Charities because we give them
money and local towns and governments
because we save them money recycling oil
instead of pouring it down the drain
where it clogs sewers can save towns and
cities hundreds of thousands of dollars
yearly our second strategy was to find
adults to do the
work you know there's a lot of child
labor laws out there and we figured that
our parents probably wouldn't let us
play with Greece all the time time so we
partnered with grease collectors bioda
refiners as well as biod biofuel
Distributors basically the bio the
biodiesel uh
refiner uh he sells the grease or no he
gets the money from the Greece which is
a commodity and the grease collector
gets a piece for his work then we found
a biofuel distributor who is willing to
distribute the biofuel for us at a
discounted price we discovered the
number one rule of Wall Street if you
want to make make a system sustainable
every single party in the process has to
make
money that brings me to my last strategy
which is keep it simple we found that
this was essential for people to adopt
any changes so we promoted biodiesel
Blends which don't require modification
to the furnace and plan to set up
convenient locations where residents
could recycle their oil then we took
action we split our whole process into
three parts the first of which is
raising awareness we asked Our Town
Council to set up a cooking well
recepticle at the transfer station so
residents could recycle oil we
distributed 5,300 Flyers 2500 kitchen
calendars made presentations and a
public service announcement with Cox
media then we targeted commercial waste
cooking oil we asked restaurants to
donate their oil to our program and
currently we have 111 restaurants
participating we figured that a law to
ban
cooking oil dumping could change
people's behavior but we didn't want to
just go up to our legislators and ask
them to start making the law instead we
drafted the bill ourselves and then
showed it to them so they could help us
get it passed our strategy involved
something almost non-existent in
Washington today called
bipartisanship so we worked with these
legislators and we testified at the
State House in March of 2011
the law was passed on the floor and then
our strategy worked the governor signed
our bill into law in
July the second part of our
process the second part of our process
was collecting refining we had a gree
collector collect the oil from
restaurants and residents they then
bring it to a biodiesel refiner where
it's refined into biodiesel and as you
can see we employed our strategy of
getting adults to do all the
work the last part of our program is
biofuel
distribution the biofuel is distributed
and all of our proceeds go to
charity we're currently working on
biodiesel use in school buses but again
like the bill we didn't want to just go
up to our school committee and ask them
to implement this instead we created our
own study of
biodiesel we conducted a nationwide
survey uh to show that biodiesel is
reliable so we uh surveyed schools that
were already using biodiesel in their
school buses we did a gel temperature
gel temperature test to show that uh
biodiesel can withstand cold New England
temperatures we did a pollutant test to
show it's cleaner we carry out a flasho
test to show it's safer and we
calculated the cost of running biodiesel
and school buses to show that it's
cheaper due to a Rhode Island law that
ex excise tax on
biodiesel two months ago we presented
our our findings to the school committee
and as a result the superintendent of
the schools has made the decision to use
biodiesel Blends in all the westle
school
buses here are results so far we've set
up nine public cooking oil receptacles
in Rhode Island and Connecticut we
collect about 4,000 gallons of frees per
month and by the epa's calculations
we've offset 1.6 million pounds of CO2
emissions to
date we've also been able to donate
14,600 gallons of bioheat or about
$53,000 to five local charities enabling
146 families to stay
warm and from this year uh we've raised
an additional $15,000 for the 2013
winter year media coverage has helped us
raise a tremendous amount of awareness
from our local newspapers to MTV which
made a documentary which broadcast
around the world um ivanho news which
leted our story be told to 250 TV
stations um magazines such as the unup
tons of magazine which is printed in
eight languages uh was and recycling
magazine biodiesel magazine and even a
sewer plant magazine featured on
Project we also got our story told to
kids through Scholastic News and we were
even featured on the cover of the
Chinese World
Journal the United Nations heard about
our program and they put us on their
homepage as an example of sustainable
development and green
economy we even invited to the White
House Twice first for the president's
environmental Youth Awards you could see
me circled in
red as well as to uh in February of this
year for the White House science fair
where we even got to sit behind
President Obama and here again if you
get can't see there's
me all this media coverage has helped us
uh in raising awareness and spreading
the word as a result many people have
contacted us because they wanted to help
so as a result we created a tool kit to
send out to people like us who wanted to
start TGIF in their own communities By
Request we've sent this out to people in
Connecticut buff Buffalo New York
Louisiana Los Angeles and even Nova
Scotia Canada
these are my teammates we've been
working together for four years now and
we even though we're still young uh we
made a difference and changed the world
this is New York anything can happen if
you work hard and smart I think that you
should take advantage of that you can't
wait for change to come instead you have
to take action and be your own Superman
thank you