The Woodland Park High School welcomed a new mural made from recycled bottle caps as part of Sonia Kettler’s Gold Award project to end her time as a Girl Scout. The Gold Award is given to scouts in grades 9-12 who have finished 80+ hour projects towards sustainable projects that help problems in their community.

Kettler organized and ran a bottle cap drive within the community in places like the high school and the library. After multiple weeks of collection, she took home the thousands of collected bottle caps to be reused in her mural, cleaning them off and preparing for the mural’s construction.

With the help of volunteers from the community she assembled, and installed the mural depicting the mountains in front of the sunset. Sonia grew up loving the outdoors and every living thing on Earth making it her goal to protect our beautiful environment. With the damage done by plastic continuously on the rise she’s focused on tackling it with her Gold Award project.

Sonia commented

“Humans use 200 million tons of single-use plastic every year. This plastic takes billions of years to decompose and is polluting our environment and our health,” Kattler said. “I want to bring awareness to this problem by getting my community involved in a piece of art that will bring to light how much plastic we use and discard everyday.”

Kettler’s Gold Award mentor on the Gold Award Committee, Jodie Eshbach, has recently mentored three Gold Awards including WPHS Alumni Allie Orellana.

“I was very excited about Sonia’s Gold Award project and how she’s presenting it,” Eshback said. “Such a beautiful and artistic way to spread the message of reducing plastic pollution.”

Across Colorado, there’s typically only around 35 Gold Awards annually. Eshbach helped along with a group of volunteers as Kettler put up the mural in the high school. It’s a colorful and pleasing addition to the walls of Woodland Park High School.

Kettler joined Girl Scouts with her friends in kindergarten. She’s volunteered and done many projects with her troupe.

“They once had a statue made out of trash at the zoo and I’ve always remembered it,” Kettler said.