High School Sustainability Projects

Check out the Cool Schools challenge. You'll find lots of ideas there at http://www.coolschoolchallenge.org/

You can also get lots of ideas if you search under the topic Green Schools. King County in WA State has a criteria based program--you can download checklists of ideas from http://your.kingcounty.gov/solidwaste/education/assistance.asp



Jennifer Howell
Triangle Associates
United States

Hey Emily

The Sierra Youth Coalation has established an amazing program call Sustainable Highschools project.. check it out

http://www.sustainablehighschools.ca/

Brooke Carere
Youth Climate Leadership Alliance
Squamish, BC
 

Emily, You may want to consider the Canon Envirothon for your high school with representatives with active programs already engaged in its various activities within Ontario. To learn more about this environmental education program for high school students throughout North America go to http://www.envirothon.org/about-us.html. The website for Ontario Envirothon can be found at http://www.ontarioenvirothon.on.ca/

Check it out! I'm sure you will be hooked, as I was years ago.
Best wishes!



George Zoto, Ph.D.
Project Manager
Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection
United States

Hi Emily

My suggestion is not based on any projects I can reference, but rather harks back to the good ol' days of being in high school myself.

If you can set up the parameters first with the principal, key staff etc as to how much change they're going to be happy with, and what Budget, if any you can have, then I think one of the best ways to approach it is to ask the students what they would most like to change/improve at their school. Being given the responsibility and power as a teenager to actually make a change (no matter how small) is pretty cool from memory

I worked briefly with a group of primary school kids and when this was put to them, the big thing for them was having a rubbish bin near where they played on the oval at lunchtimes, because there was always rubbish around. It may be a small thing, but they were so thrilled at being able to do something, and that someone had even asked them. We also did basic auditing of the school with the kids, which they loved

Good luck!




emily physick
Australia

Emily
CSIRO, Australia's National R&D organisation, has commenced a pilot program called "Carbon Kids" in which primary and secondary schools look at ways to reduce their school carbon footprint as well as engage the community to reduce its carbon footprint. The program also involves teaching the students about climate change, utilising developed curriculum material. If interested, more information can be found at: http://www.csiro.au/resources/CarbonKids.html

cheers

Tony


Dr Tony Hudson
CSIRO
Australia
www.csiro.au

Hi Emily,

There's a great new program in Canada that was actually started in Ontario. It's the High School Climate Challenge and it is a free program designed to help high schools conduct GHG audits and action plan to reduce emissions. It brings in Clean Air Champions (olympic and national athletes) and Mentors (university students). Check it out at www.climatechallenge.ca or email [email protected] for more info or to register your school.

Hope you find it helpful!

Karen

BC Coordinator
High School Climate Challenge
[email protected]

Karen Stroebel
Master's in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability
Sweden