School-wide Ideas and Projects
Here is a list of 10 ideas for those environmental enthusiasts
who want to take proactive steps at their school. Some of these
activities involve small groups, while others require the
participation of the whole school. All of the school-wide
activities will work well as Earth Day events. If your school is
not cooperative, you could also approach your town office and/or
CIR with your plans. Whatever you choose, you will be helping to
bring about more environmental awareness among your students,
teachers and the local community! So get out there and take some
action!
- Design an environmental self-introduction.
- Tired of the same
old introduction? On the verge of reinventing yourself?
Spice up your self-intro by giving it an environmental
focus. Show and tell students what you as an individual
do for the environment. Go over the major environmental
problems in your country, and the actions that your
country has taken to improve the situation.
- Start an Environment Club.
- Announce
your plan, post a sign-up list. Arrange a meeting time
once a week with interested students. Talk about
environment issues, plan school projects/events (see
below), make weekly "environmental tip" posters
to educate the rest of the school. Don't forget to
ask students what they would like to do!
- Start a composting project.
- Correctly
composting food scraps and yard waste reduces the amount
of garbage that is otherwise burned, thereby producing
fewer global warming gases. Get approval from your school
to contact your town office for a composter and assign
students to monitor the project (an easy addition to
cleaning time duties).
- Start a reuse project at your school.
- It
takes much less energy to reuse a product than it does to
make a new one. Start a school collection of old jars,
containers and anything else you think the school could
use.
- Organize a school-wide cleanup.
- Organized cleanups are common in Japan, so it
should be fairly easy to convince your school to allow
you to do one. Invite local journalists to attend, and/or
publicize your results in the PTA or town newsletter.
- Hold a "Garbageless Lunch Day".
- This idea is for high schools only, since school
lunch is served at junior high schools. Invite students
and teachers to participate in a one-day garbageless
lunch to see how much garbage they can collectively
reduce. Beforehand, write a notice or announce at a
school assembly exactly what you want them to refrain
from using (waribashi, paper cups, cans, plastic bags,
disposable bento boxes, etc). Count the number of garbage
bags used at cleaning time and compare the total number
to the total on a regular day. Publish your results.
- Organize a "Switch it off Day or Week".
- See if your whole
school can go without electricity for an entire day or
week. Hold an assembly or perform a play in front of the
school in order to teach them about why reducing our
energy is so important.
- Organize a tree planting day.
- Tree planting is an opportunity to connect physically and
emotionally with your surroundings and learn a lot about
the environment. At the same time, you will be creating a
local "carbon sink" and saving energy. The
right trees planted next to the school building can help
to shade classrooms in the summer or act as windbreakers
that block cold winds in the winter. Contact your town
conservation office to help you chose the appropriate
tree species for your area.
- Organize an anti-idling campaign.
- With
permission from your school, designate the front of your
school as a "no idling zone". People who leave
their engines on in the area will be asked to turn them
off. Make posters with a class or environment club to
educate the school on the harmful environmental effects
of idling.
- Naturalize the gardening club.
- This idea is based on the assumption that your
school has a gardening club. If it doesn't, start
one! To naturalize the school's gardens, you will
need to do some background research with the students.
Research some local perennial wild flowers, flowers with
unique environmental effects (e.g. flowers that soak up a
lot of carbon dioxide), flowers that need little water,
etc. Also, if the gardening club uses chemical
fertilizers and pesticides, look into what is available
organically. Let others know about your school's
"environmental garden".