Being Water Wise with Frannie: PCPP’s and Wastewater

 

Hello, everyone, and hello, Spring!

It’s time to learn about water education with your favorite fish, Frannie. Today we’ll be talking about Personal Care Products and Pharmaceuticals, also known as “PCPP’s”. PCPP’s include products like toothpaste, shampoo, aspirin, and household cleaning chemicals. While daily hygiene and staying clean and healthy are important, did you ever think about where all of that toothpaste goes once you’re finished brushing your teeth?

 

“Wastewater” is used water, or water used by humans that is no longer clean, that is sent to water recycling centers to be treated, or cleaned, to be reused. However, untreated wastewater is harmful to the environment and can destroy places like lakes and streams, which are home to fish like Frannie.

What Can You Do to Help Keep Frannie’s Home Clean?

Talk to your mom and dad about throwing away medicine rather than flushing it down the toilet.

Ask your mom or dad about using more environmentally-friendly cleaning products around the house. Natural products are harmless to the environment and keep Frannie happy.

Throw away kitchen grease instead of pouring it down the sink.

When brushing your teeth, use a "pea-size" amount of toothpaste to make it last longer.

Also, use a "nickel-size" amount of shampoo and conditioner every time you wash your hair. Remember to use products until the bottle is completely empty.

Save used, leftover soap to make into a new bar of soap later. This can be done by grating and melting the leftover soap pieces in a double boiler. As it melts, make sure to add your favorite smells using essential oils. 

Bring unwanted cleaning products, paint, or other chemicals to your local refuge. These products are called "hazardous waste" and can pollute our environment and waterways if flushed down the toilet or thrown in the trash.

Use these products to help reduce wastewater pollution from PCPP's and keep Nebraska's water clean. Remember, water is as important to us as it is to Frannie and her friends, so we need to take care of it.

It's Water-Wise Wednesday with Frannie the Fish! {Upcycled Olaf Ornament with Bottle Caps}

 Why Upcycling?

Want to learn why Frannie is doing an upcycling project this week? Check out the Upcycled Clothing Pin Snowflake Ornament blog here.

This Week's Project:
Bottle Cap Olaf Ornament

Frannie found some old bottle caps sitting in her desk, and she decided to upcycle them into her favorite Frozen snowman: Olaf!

Materials:

• 3 bottle caps
• scissors
• white paint
• white, black, and orange construction paper or foam sheets
• hot glue gun
• string or ribbon
• 2 small sticks (can be collected for free outside!)
• 2 small, white pom-poms

Instructions:

1. Collect 3 bottle caps. 
   
2. Paint the bottle caps white. This may take several layers of paint. Allow them to dry completely before moving on to the next step.
   
    
3. Glue the three bottle caps together using a hot glue gun. It might be helpful to ask an adult for assistance when using the hot glue gun. For extra support, glue a piece of string across the back of all three bottle caps. 
   
4. Add the stick arms, buttons, and pom-pom feet using the glue gun. If you don't have black buttons, you can use black construction paper.
   
5. Using the scissors, cut out the elements of Olaf's face: mouth (with large front teeth), carrot nose, eyes, and eyebrows. Glue these elements to the top bottle cap.
   
6. Finish your Olaf ornament by gluing a looped piece of string to the back of the top bottle cap. Congratulations! You have just made an Upcycled Bottle Cap Olaf Ornament! 

For More Fun:

Make a snowman family! Using different items you find around the house (buttons, scraps of yarn or fabric, craft supplies such as glitter, etc.) make some friends for Olaf. Get creative and have fun!

Share: 

Share pictures of your family and your snowmen with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or by sending them in to info@groundwater.org. Happy Holidays!

It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Upcycled Clothes Pin Snowflake Ornament}

Tis the season for repurposed or upcycled decorations! Frannie loves upcycling because it takes something that would normally be thrown away and makes it new and usable again. Upcycling is a great way to reduce our waste and conserve water! 

How does upcycling reduce waste and conserve water? 

Upcycling reduces the need to use new, raw materials when making a new product. By using old materials instead of new materials, less energy and water is used. Even better, air pollution and water pollution are reduced!

Upcycled Clothing Pin Snowflake Ornament:

Frannie was looking through her home for fun items to upcycle when she came across some broken clothing pins. With some creativity (and the help of Pinterest), Frannie decided to make a snowflake ornament out of her broken clothing pins!

What You Need:

• 8 clothing pins (or 16 halves of clothing pins)
• white paint
• paint brush
• glue
• string

Instructions:

1. Gather together your 8 clothing pins. You'll need both halves of each clothing pin for a total of 16 pieces. 
   
2. Paint each clothing pin white. 
   
3. Glue the clothing pin halves together as shown in the photo. You should end up with 8 snowflake pieces. Thread a string through the hole in one piece. 
   
4. Glue four snowflake pieces together into a "+" shape as shown in the photo. 
   
5. Glue the final four snowflake pieces into the corners of the already glued pieces, making sure the snowflake piece with the string is located where you would like the "top" of your snowflake to be. 
   
6. Congratulations! You have just made an Upcycled Clothing Pin Snowflake Ornament! Hang it up as a winter decoration or wrap it up to give as a gift.

For More Fun:

Get creative! Add color to your snowflake or a touch of glitter. Write a special message on it or have all your family sign their names on it. Have fun!

Share:

Share pictures of your family and your snowflakes with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or by sending them in to info@groundwater.org. Happy Holidays!

It's Water-Wise Wednesday with Frannie the Fish! {Games and Puzzles and Coloring Sheets, Oh My!}

To give her eyes a break from virtual learning, Frannie has enjoyed diving into the dozens of crosswords, word searches, and coloring sheets from The Groundwater Foundation. Frannie knows that learning is more fun when you can be creative and she can't think of a better way to learn about groundwater. Check out some of her favorite activities below!

 Contamination Crossword - How many contamination vocabulary terms do you know?

Find all the groundwater words in this fun word search! Groundwater Word Search

Recycle Maze - Can you find your way out of this twisty maze?

Water Crossword - Review what you know about our most important resource - Water!

Show off your water cycle knowledge and complete the Water Cycle Crossword.

Wet Word Search - How many vocabulary words can you find?

Protect the Earth Coloring Sheet - Reveal your inner artist!

The Groundwater Foundation is regularly creating and releasing fun new content, so keep an eye out for updates from Frannie!