Grade 12 student Holly Tetzlaff will be representing Canada at the International Stockholm Junior Water Prize Competition, or as she calls it, the Science Olympics.
“I saw this email come in and I kinda loaded it and I read it, and I started going through and it’s like, ‘you are the 2018 Stockholm,'” said Tetzlaff, who attends East Northumberland Secondary School in Brighton. “I just started crying instantly.”
Tetzlaff went to the Peterborough Regional Science Fair in April with her final grade 12 science project, exploring the environmental impact of pseudo-flushables. Then, in May, Tetzlaff was sent to the the National Science Fair in Ottawa, where she won the national science competition.
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“I looked at different items like flushable wipes, dog feces bags, feminine hygiene products, toilet brush scrubs, and then I also compared them to my controls,” she said. “I had a positive control of toilet paper because that’s the only item that’s actually sewer approved to go down our sewer system.”
For her trip to Sweden, she will bring her logbook and these sample bags, which show items before and after an experiment that show no disintegration.
“I started looking at the flushable market and how it’s just completely expanding and with our sewer clogs and waste treatment plants and how they are being affected by that, because right now in Canada alone, it’s costing us about $250 million a year for repair and replacements.”
Tetzlaff said she’s looking forward to to being able to spread her message.
Tetzlaff will arrive in Sweden on Aug. 24, where she will present her water findings throughout the week with about 30 other representatives from countries around the world.