Action of the Month
April 2005
Take action at your school this month! Here are two environmental actions that you can for your environmental clubs to take on which will help your school become more sustainable.
The first action is directly related to this Month’s Youth Coalition Meeting on March 13th from 1:30-4 pm at the Orinda Library, where our speaker will talk about Composting in Your Schools. The goal, do not just come to the meeting and learn about composting but take the steps to get composting happening at your school. The first step, come to the March meeting, but if you cannot because maybe you live else where, don’t worry, your first step will be other’s second step. Go on-line to this link, http://www.earthteam.net/projects/action_projects/environmental_surveys/index.html, and do the Garden/Landscape/Composting Survey at your school. You will find out a lot about how your school operates when it comes to landscaping, gardening, and food waste.
But, don’t stop there – take what you learned and turn it into an environmental action project. If your school uses chemical products for landscaping, can you work with the administration and gardeners to try and find a more environmentally friendly product? Did you find a place on your campus where you could start a garden? If so, talk to the administration about using this land for a student garden. In your survey, did you realize how much food waste your school creates which gets thrown away? What about starting a composting system to cut down on the waste?
These are all great projects for clubs to do to help their school become more environmentally friendly, so do the survey, chose the area you feel most strongly about, and take action.
The second action is in support of the upcoming April Fossil Fool’s Day. The goal of this action is to move towards cutting back on our use of energy, and maybe even finding ways to move away from fossil fuel use and towards clean energy. The place to start, the same link as above, but this time, do the School Energy Audit. This will clue you into places in your school where you can improve on the amount of energy used, meaning finding out where to cut down on energy use. What type of light bulbs does your school use and can you talk to the administration about using more energy efficient ones? Did you find that people are leaving lights on all around the school, and if so, can you start an education campaign to prevent this from happening?
You can even take this action project a step further and talk to the administration about moving towards alternative energy? What about having your school run on solar power? This project is larger in scope, but don’t get discouraged, it all begins with little steps. Set up a meeting with a teacher you think might be able to support this project. Send around an information sheet on alternative energy at your school, and make it so that people can sign it in support. It is always important to get teacher and student interest in projects at your school. The more people involved, the more likely it is it will happen. You can also bring in a speaker on the subject to educate people, and, set-up a meeting with the administration of your school to talk about the idea and tell them about the level of interest throughout the school. It may not happen in one meeting, but once a dialogue is established you will have come along way, and if you keep at it, good things will come.
Both of these actions are found on EarthTeam’s website and are for you to take and follow through with at your school. And of course, we are here to help. If you do the survey and do not know where to go next, get in touch with one of our Youth Coordinators, Laura, at LauraG@earthteam.net, and we’ll get the next steps laid out.