“(Mine)Crafting A Better Future: Net Zero Challenge”

One of the recent builds in our Minecraft Club is the 2022 NYCDOE Minecraft Education Net Zero Challenge. Focusing on making buildings in NYC more sustainable, our devoted esports team members have done extensive research on environmental solutions and problems in our modern day and used their research in every block of their builds. Our research and building competitions inspired us to take climate action, join the Billion Oyster Project and NY Harbor Symposium to spread the word about our work, and to learn more from everyone else about what else we could be doing for our coastal communities.

Having participated in sustainability building challenges prior, when we heard about Net Zero challenge we were ecstatic. We immediately tried to put together a dedicated team of students so we could start working on brainstorming ideas for our theme. There were three themes offered for the Net Zero challenge: Zero Waste, Greener Buildings, and Efficient Transportation. After deliberation with the team, we chose the theme of Greener Buildings. With this theme, we could do a Minecraft build that’s diverse in ideas and can cover many edges of the sustainability spectrum.

We knew we wanted our build to be influenced by the area around Coney Island, so our next step was taking a trip to Coney Island Creek. On our trip, we worked with specialists from Billion Oyster Project, the American Littoral Society, and marine biologists who have worked at New York Harbor. Working with these specialists gave us a unique and informative experience, as we put on our waders to seine in the ocean and observe the different sea creatures living in the water. Although we did not find any oysters while seining, we found and examined a variety of species such as comb jellyfish and baby shrimp. Afterwards, we studied their impacts on the ecosystem. Besides seining, we also ran various tests in the water to check the chloroform, phosphorous, and nitrate levels at Coney Island Creek. We also ran a test to examine the levels of fecal matter in the ocean and compared the water near the sewer to the water out in the ocean to see how they vary. Billion Oyster Project taught us a lot about our local ecosystem and how we can help protect it, and broadened our perspectives to want to consider careers and volunteer jobs in marine biology and eco-sustainability.

Next, we headed back to our school to begin brainstorming ideas. We gathered our team after school and started a brainstorming session where we documented every idea we had onto a white board, using our previous knowledge and what we learned on the trip to come up with sustainable solutions. We then picked our favorite ideas and started to draw out a map of what our potential build would look like. We drew out where every building would go, and what would be inside those buildings. Working with a plan like this has helped us tremendously for staying organized and making sure everyone is on the same page when building. Then, we began the actual build. We only had about a week and a half to complete our build, so we met for a couple of hours everyday to work on our build. Teamwork and hard work were vital in this step, to ensure everyone was working coherently and the builds made sense.

Finally, after our build was complete, we wrote a script of dialogue for the video. We all recorded our voice lines for the video, screen recorded, and edited our build into a beautiful comprehensive video. Our video was broadcasted at the Stockholm+50 conference in Sweden about climate change!