Youth Innovation Challenge

Aquaponics: A water-wise solution for sustainable food production

Gabrielle Kirk and Michael Lavorato

Aquaponics: A water-wise solution for sustainable food production puts forward an innovative and sustainable form of agriculture as an alternative to current agricultural practices that contribute to generating critical water and environmental issues, including freshwater dead-zones, water scarcity, environmental degradation, rampant loss of biodiversity, and global greenhouse gas emissions.

This solution can mimic the natural ecology in a region by creating a symbiotic relationship between plants and aquatic animals, using a closed-loop system to recirculate water through fish tanks and plant beds, conserving water while producing nutrient-rich food and plant fertilizer.

Aquaponics systems, which have been successfully implemented in school settings, promote lifelong learning and environmental stewardship in youth and encourage the shift towards a more sustainable food system.

Description of the organization

Aquaponics World, led by Gabrielle Kirk and Michael Lavorato, combats deleterious water-related issues and helps mitigate climate change by building a more sustainable food system. They specialize in designing, constructing, and maintaining the small-scale aquaponics systems.

BlueBond: burbujas que protegen nuestro agua (BlueBond: bubbles protecting our water)

Paloma Arena Serrano Ramos and Annie Aixa Rosas Hernández

BlueBond: burbujas que protegen nuestra agua (BlueBond: bubbles protecting our water) offers a new way to fight plastic pollution in water bodies in North America. It is designed to prevent plastic waste in water bodies from reaching the oceans through the implementation of an innovative technology and by empowering communities near rivers and coastlines.

Drawing its inspiration from nature, BlueBond imitates the hunting strategy of humpback whales by means of an innovative technology, which consists of forming air bubble curtains in strategic locations in water bodies to trap and redirect plastic waste towards convenient collection points.

With its collaborative and participatory approach, BlueBond is a solution that gets local communities involved via a business model in which the plastic waste collected represents income for local residents.

Organization description

BlueBond is a social enterprise and the brainchild of Arena Serrano and Annie Rosas. It is an expression of their experience and of their love for Mexico, for nature, and for rivers and oceans. Arena and Annie believe in the power of entrepreneurship to transform society. This is what has motivated them to take action, with the objective of protecting every drop of water in Mexico and the rest of North America.

Escuela itinerante del agua por la vida (Water for life mobile school)

Perseida Tenorio Toledo and María Guiebeu Ballesteros Ávila

The water for life mobile school is a solution which creates local change agents in Indigenous and marginalized communities to provide solutions to different water related issues, including lack of access to potable water and contamination of water reserves caused by the absence of drainage systems.

With its focus on creating capacities, the mobile school arms young people with ideas on potential solutions to their communities’ water related issues. Through this initiative, young people acquire the tools, skills and knowledge needed to implement different ecotechnologies for rainwater capture, water purification, treatment of soapy waters and reintegrating water to rehabilitate degraded areas.

Organization description

The water for life mobile school is an initiative of Perseida Tenorio and María Guiebeu Ballesteros Ávila, two young Zapoteca women concerned by their communities’ water needs. In response, they combined their experience and knowledge in biology and food engineering to, first, find replicable low cost solutions to water related issues and then to train and inspire other young people to implement them in their own communities.

Is your water well?

Hailey Hall

Is your water well? is a community-based public health awareness campaign focused on well testing and identifying nitrate pollution. This solution addresses informational and socioeconomic barriers to well testing and targets rural and underserved communities, where wells are untested or undertested, leaving citizens in these regions vulnerable to the health hazards of nitrate pollution.

This initiative facilitates well test availability and awareness through door-to-door distribution, educational presentations, and sampling demonstrations. This helps increase the understanding of the health of rural water supplies while connecting citizens to information about their health and aquifer conditions, and programs for water supply restoration.

Through a hands-on participatory approach, this solution aims to educate the public, encourage sound water stewardship, and mobilize citizens for groundwater protection.

Description of organization

Hailey Hall is a project manager at AquiferWatch. She is a hydrologist and environmental educator from a multigenerational farming family in Florida’s Suwannee Valley. Experiences on her family’s farm and witnessing the decline of her home’s famous springs due to nitrate pollution and groundwater pumping have fueled her drive for cooperation and progress on water issues.