How to Start a Green Initiative at School

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parts

1Assessing Your School's Green Performance

2Starting a Green Team and Making a Plan

3Raising Student Awareness

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Questions & Answers

Tips and Warnings

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References

These days, many people are looking for ways that they can help the environment. As individuals, we can only have so much impact. Working together, though, it's possible have an effect on bigger institutions we are part of, such as schools. This can produce more powerful results than just making individual changes. Look around your school--is it doing all it can to protect the environment? If not, you can work together with your classmates, parents, and the school itself to start a green initiative. You can help your school become a leader in conservation and do something significant to protect our earth.

Steps

Part 1

Part 1 of 3:

Assessing Your School's Green Performance

1. 
   1
   See if your school is recycling all it can. The first thing you'll need to do when trying to start a green initiative at your school to look into areas where your school could improve its environmental performance. An easy place to start is with recycling.

   • Recycling conserves energy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. It's easy to do, and in some cases can even bring in a little extra money for your school.
   • It shouldn't be hard to find out if your school is recycling. Are there recycling bins? If not, the school probably isn't recycling. Do people seem to be using these bins?
   • Keep in mind that there are many things that can be recycled. It is possible that even if your school is recycling, it could be recycling more. This includes paper, cans, plastic, and electronic waste like obsolete computers.
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   Find out if your school is composting. Composting is like nature's recycling plan. It's a way of turning organic waste such as food scraps and lawn clippings into nutrient-rich soil. It prevents waste and, like recycling reduces trash going to the landfill.

   • Composting can be done on-site in a school garden or in worm bins. It can also be done in a commercial facility that picks up compostable materials.
   • Again, it shouldn't be hard to find out if your school is doing this. Are there designated bins for composting? If not, the school probably isn't happening.
3. 
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   Look into whether your school is purchasing sustainable supplies. Being green isn't just about what your school puts out in the form of waste, but also about what it takes in when it buys supplies. Check out the packaging for supplies available in your classrooms. Here are some things to look for:

   • Are the paper products made with recycled content?
   • Are plastic products labeled as PVC free? PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is a highly toxic plastic.
   • Are computers and other electronics energy efficient? Look for an Energy Star logo and rating.
4. 
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   Investigate your school lunch program. People often overlook the lunch program as a place to go green. There are many ways that your school can make its lunch program more eco-friendly. Find out if your school is doing any of the following (you may need to ask cafeteria staff or your principal):

   • Buying food from local farms, to reduce emissions from shipping.
   • Using re-usable serving and eating utensils, like plates, forks, and spoons.
   • Offering a vegetarian meal option, participating in a "Meat Free Monday" program, or encouraging responsible hunter education. Domestic livestock farming is one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions in the world today.
5. 
   5
   Check into what your school is doing to save electricity. Reducing electricity and other forms of energy use is another way your school can save money and help the environment, and there are many simple ways to do it. Look around your school and see what it could do to save more electricity. Here are some things to look for:

   • Use of energy-efficient light bulbs, such as compact fluorescents.
   • Installation of solar panels.
   • Installation of motion sensors or timers to turn lights off automatically.
   • A "turn it off campaign" encouraging students and faculty to turn off lights, computers, and other appliances at the end of the day or when not in use for an extended period.
   • An ample supply of bicycle racks to encourage students to walk or ride a bicycle to school rather than relying on motorized transportation.
6. 
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   Examine your school's water use. Water waste is another environmental problem your school can help address. Look around your school to see if it has done any of the following:

   • Stopped any leaks promptly.
   • Installed automatic faucets for efficient hand-washing.
   • Installed waterless urinals or low-flush urinals in the boys' bathrooms.
   • Installed dual-flush toilets inside all student bathroom stalls.
   • Set up a rainwater collection system such as rain barrels or rain gardens to control runoff.
7. 
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   Try to determine if your school is avoiding toxic chemicals. Many cleaning products, pesticides, and other commonly used chemicals contain toxic substances that can harm plants, wildlife, and even people.

   • It may not be possible for you to find out what clean products your school is using, but it can't hurt to ask. Your school's custodian, a teacher, or the principal might be willing to let you have a look at the cleaning supplies being used. Look for the Green Seal or EcoLogo symbol on the labels of these products to see if they are green products.
   • Even if you can't check into this now, it's something to keep in mind as you develop your strategic plan for your green initiative.
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Part 2

Part 2 of 3:

Starting a Green Team and Making a Plan

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   1
   Ask some friends to join your green team. You won't be able to get a green initiative off the ground yourself--you'll need the help of many other people. To start, find some friends at your school who are concerned about the environment and ask them to help.

   • From the planning stage onward, you're going to be working with lots of other people in making decisions and carrying them out. An easy place to start putting your team together is by asking friends to be part of your green initiative.
2. 
   2
   Involve parents and teachers. Student support won't be enough to make big changes happen at your school. Once you've found some friends who want to be part of what you're doing, keep building your green team by adding some adults.

   • A good place to start is with your parents and the parents of your friends who want to help.
   • Next, talk to some teachers who you think might by sympathetic to what you're doing. Support from teachers will make your campaign to improve your school more powerful. Teachers will also be important later in helping make sure the plans you make are actually carried out.
   • Having support from custodial staff is a good idea too!
3. 
   3
   Join an organization. There are many organization that exist to help make school-based green initiatives successful. These organizations can provide a variety of resources to help you organize a program at your school.

   • Green Schools Initiative, Go Green Initiative, and the Healthy Schools Campaign are three of the big national organizations that help with green initiatives in schools. You can sign up on their websites and download a variety of helpful guides and other resources for your campaign.
   • Look into whether there might be local organizations in your area that could also help.
4. 
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   Do some research. Before you try to get your school to start making changes, it's a good idea to do some research about what these changes might cost and what resources are available to help your school.

   • For example, if you are going to try to get your school to start composting, you might find out who in your area does commercial composting, in case your school doen't want to do it on site. Contact them and find out what it would cost to start picking up compost at your school.
   • You should also look into what resources your state provides to schools that are trying to go green. In some states, for example, the Department of Environmental Protection will have programs already in place to help schools be more eco-friendly.
   • It's also a good idea to look into steps taken by other local schools in your area. This can help provide ideas, and shows that the steps you suggest taking are actually doable.
   • The more information you can collect before meeting with school authorities, the more likely you will be to persuade them that making some green changes is a good idea.
5. 
   5
   Meet with the principal and/or school board. To complete your green team and really get things started, you're going to need approval and assistance from authorities and administrators who have the power to actually put your suggested changes into action.

   • Ask for a meeting with your principal, members of the school board, and/or other administrators. If possible, bring supportive parents and teachers to the meeting as well, along with your research.
   • Explain the ways you think your school could do a better job of protecting the environment, and that you have gathered supporters who are willing to help make these changes happen.
   • Ask supportive administrators to join your green team to help guide your school's environmental efforts.
   • Find out what resources the school is or is not willing to make available for your green initiative. Is the school willing/able to spend a little money on this? Will it allow students to construct worm bins for composting? Is the school willing to host an event to raise student awareness? How else can the school help make green changes possible?
6. 
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   Encourage an audit. The next step is a more formal assessment of your school's impact on the environment and what it can do better. By now, you should have some ideas already for areas of improvement, but you want your school to take a more official and thorough look.

   • Your green team and school staff can work together to conduct a systematic study of your school's energy use, waste disposal, and so on.
   • The green initiative organization that you've joined can provide you with resources to help your school conduct this audit including surveys, checklists, and curricula for teachers who want to make the audit a part of their lesson plans.
7. 
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   Create a strategic plan. Once the audit is complete, your green team will need to meet to develop a plan. Pick a time and place to meet that everyone can attend, and use the information from the audit to determine how your school can make the biggest difference, given the resources available.

   • The plan should include both long-term goals, to inspire people, and short-term goals that can reasonably be achieved within the year.
   • Your short term goals should feature a list of specific actions to be taken (and who is responsible for making these things happen), a list of necessary resources for making these steps take place, and a timeline for when they can reasonably be completed.
   • Your school will need to approve the plan so you can be sure your goals can actually be achieved.
8. 
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   Monitor progress. After your strategic plan is in place, your work is far from over. The green team will need to meet regularly to make sure the plan is being followed and determine how effective it has been.

   • A green initiative is not a one-time change, it is an ongoing process. Your green team should plan on meeting at least once a month to discuss how things are going and revise the plan as necessary.
   • The green team should conduct an annual review of how much impact the green initiative has had on the school. Once the original short-term goals have been achieved, the team should set new goals and look for ways to make the school ever more environmentally friendly.
   • Once again, the Green Schools Initiative and other organizations can provide valuable resources for monitoring your school's progress toward the greener future your strategic plan was designed to create.
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Part 3

Part 3 of 3:

Raising Student Awareness

1. 
   1
   Host an event. A green initiative will work best when everyone in the school understands and (hopefully) supports the changes you are making. In addition to changing school policies and practices, you'll need to educate students about what your school is doing. A great way to start is with a school-wide event.

   • Your green initiative will be much more successful if students participate. For example, if you add compost bins to your cafeteria, but students don't understand why they should use them or what goes in them, your composting plan isn't going to be as successful. Work with your green team to host an assembly or another gathering of students to promote the green initiative.
   • Many have found that an Earth Day celebration on or around April 22nd is a great way to raise student awareness and participation in the green initiative while connecting your efforts to global environmental issues.
   • Make this event something fun that students get to actually participate in. This can be more effective than just asking them to listen to a boring speech.
2. 
   2
   Encourage green curricula. Supportive teachers can help make your green initiative a success by teaching lessons on the environment and connecting them to the efforts your school is making to be more eco-friendly.

   • You can encourage teachers who want to help to look at the free lesson plans that are provided by many of the national green initiative organizations (including, hopefully, the one you've joined).
   • The environmental protection agency also offers materials for teaching about the environment.
   • Many people conducting green initiatives have found that hands-on projects, where students get to see first-hand the effects of their actions on the environment, work best.
   • One suggestion for hands-on in class participation is to involve students in monitoring the progress of the green initiative. How much waste is being recycled that wasn't before? How much waste that should be going into recycling bins is still ending up in the trash?
3. 
   3
   Start a club. Not every student at your school who cares about the environment will be able to commit to being part of the green team. For students who want to help but can't join the team, consider starting a green club at school to provide other opportunities to participate.

   • The club can help with monitoring, recycling or composting efforts, building worm bins, maintaining rain gardens, or any other task that will help the school meet its green goals.
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Community Q&A

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• Question

  I don't have many friends at school so how can I make my club bigger?

  

  Community Answer

  See if you can get a teacher on your side, as they may be able to convince students in their classes to join. You could also put up a ton of posters (a great spot for these if your school allows it is on the back of bathroom stall doors; they are hard to ignore there). Maybe find a way to market to the overachiever population too, like seeing if you can write a note on the whiteboards in AP classrooms. If your school has a volunteering organization like InterAct, Key Club, National Honor Society, Red Cross (or all of them), ask the adviser or an officer of the club to mention yours as an opportunity for further volunteering.

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• Question

  Is it also helpful if you add plants to the classroom?

  

  Vaun Warbear

  Community Answer

  Yes, it is. If fact, having plants in the classroom can teach the students the benefits of plants and the reasons we should all be kinder to the planet.

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  If How.com.vn has helped you, please consider a small contribution to support us in helping more readers like you. We’re committed to providing the world with free how-to resources, and even $1 helps us in our mission.Support How.com.vn

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Tips

• Talk to your teachers. Some of them might be willing to "go green" in class. Help them find ways to cut down on energy and paper usage.
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• Use the summer to do your research and prepare. That way, you have the whole year to work on helping your school go green.
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