The Green Team, organized by Michael Horowitz, meets every other Thursday to discuss ways to improve the environment. The group has decided on three initiatives: “The first one,” Michael began, “is to collectively write a graduation requirement or proficiency in knowledge of sustainability… We want to help [our administrators] make sure students are graduating with an understanding of sustainability.” This needs to be done fairly quickly because, according to Michael, the team “hopes to get the new curriculum working by next year.”
The second is a “no-idle zone.” Michael explained how this would be a specific section in the parking lot where “cars would have to turn their engines off, therefore, not creating pollution.”
The third task is getting recycling bins at sports events. “Everything goes in the garbage at those events, and nothing goes in the recycling. If we could make the bins accessible to people, maybe they would take a second of their time to put stuff in the right bin,” Michal stated.
Junior Ava Clithero said, “The overall goal of the green team is to improve our school’s sustainability, and to make people care just a little more.”
The team has also just returned from their first field trip. “We went to the Youth Environmental Summit at the Barre auditorium, where a bunch of schools sent their own green teams too,” Michael explained. “They came for a training in things they can do to help their schools improve the environment.”
Vera Trumpi, a foreign exchange student from Switzerland and a member of the green team, was put in a group which talked about composting. She said that “the school wants to have more compost to make their own garden, and to grow food… I think the goal is to reuse the food we throw away to grow local food (on campus).”
Ava went on to explain the effects of having a school-produced garden. “If we could use the compost to grow our own food locally, then, first of all, we could increase the amount of local food served in the cafeteria, and second of all, we could use the money saved from growing our own food to buy healthier products, like local meat instead of factory produced meat.”
Groups at the Youth Environmental Summit also discussed ways to reduce waste. “One group talked about getting rid of milk cartons, and having a milk dispenser instead. Then we could get rid of the cartons and make less waste,” Vera explained.
