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South Surrey student keen on climate change

Kiera Adams investigating how homeowners can reduce their carbon footprint.
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Student Kiera Adams is spending the month at Western University. (Aaron Hinks photo)

Earl Marriott Secondary student Kiera Adams travelled across the country to research how homeowners could reduce their carbon footprint.

Adams, who’s going into Grade 12 this year, is one of 23 students from Surrey selected to attend SHAD, which is a summer program for high-achieving high school students.

She left South Surrey July 2 and will stay at Western University in London, Ont., until July 28. Each year, students are given a theme and one main project to work on.

Adams, who says she has a “big interest” in helping conserve energy use, is focusing her attention on reducing the amount of energy needed to heat households.

“What I’m trying to do with my group is develop an insulation with a project called Zeolite, which helps reduce the amount of energy that escapes and heat that escapes from the walls of your house,” she told Peace Arch News over the phone from London.

“That’s our take on it, but there are little things you can do, like not watering your grass as much. Little things that make a really big difference.”

Adams and her group are working on a way to mix Zeolite with paint, which would then be applied to homes.

“Our target market is people with old homes who don’t have much money. Ripping out your walls to put in new insulation is very costly.”

Though the students work on one main project throughout the month, they also fulfil tasks that relate to climate change.

“For example, today we went and planted trees in the community. That was really interesting and that’s another way to help reduce the energy footprint.”

Last week, the students went into Western’s chemistry lab and got to visit wind tunnels.

“It’s been all around a great experience so far.”

Grade 11-12 students from South Surrey participating in this year’s program include Hamza Qayyum, Danika Unger, Hugo Yin, Connor Bews, Charles Wang, Kevin Zhu and Jun Liou.



About the Author: Aaron Hinks

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