Clean and Green: District 3 schools unite to go green
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In a lively kickoff meeting last week, District 3 parents, Department of Education officials, and others met to see how to help their schools go green. The DOE announced a commitment to cutting schools’ carbon footprints in April when it joined the Green Schools Alliance. Since public schools consume 25% of New York’s municipal energy, greening the schools is the only way to meet the city’s goal of cutting carbon emissions by 30%.
Every school has a “sustainability coordinator” as of spring 2009; most are teachers whose chief role is to involve students in greening efforts. Most of the six schools represented at the meeting were already actively working on going green. Parents talked about the challenges of enforcing recycling and promised to share lists of green school supplies. John T. Shea, the DOE’s chief sustainability officer and head of the Division of School Facilities, came to answer questions. Liza Potter, community partnerships coordinator at the new Urban Assembly School for Green Careers (opening this fall in the Brandeis building) said her students could help produce information for a D3 Green Schools website.
What are the top priorities for helping a school go green?
- Lighting: All lights should be turned off when not in use, including at night. Light bulbs should be Compact Fluorescent, or CFL bulbs, which use just 25% of the energy and last 10 times longer than old-fashioned bulbs. Parents (or better yet kids) can help create signage to encourage students and staff to “make the switch” to shutting off extra lights.
- Computers: Turn off at night, sleep when not in use, and don’t use screensavers. Parents and kids can help with signs and monitoring.
- Appliances: Even though schools don’t pay for their own energy use, they should choose Energy Star rated refrigerators or air conditioners when they make purchases.
- Recycling: More than 90% of the trash generated in classrooms is paper according to the Department of Sanitation, so in most cases a paper bin is the only waste can needed in the room. For a special event involving food, the teacher can hang a grocery bag on the door, and a few wastebaskets for food and other non-recyclables can be placed in common areas. Since recycling is the law in New York City, there should be no excuses about rodents or space or pickup schedules. These are legitimate challenges that must be worked out.
Big cuts in energy use will require DOE investments that are beyond parents’ abilities. An energy audit of 90 buildings planned for this fall will provide more detailed information, but investments could include replacing boiler control panels (about $15,000 each), installing occupancy sensors on lights, creating cool roofs or green roofs where possible, and installing intelligent metering kiosks in some school lobbies to show energy use in real time. A benchmarking program called Portfolio Manager will soon show each school’s energy use, and parents will soon be able to contact Shea at the DOE to get a password to look at their schools’ energy use on Portfolio Manager.
I look forward to posting more about New York Schools going green. According to scientists, New York—a low-lying coastal city, with air quality problems and heat island effect—is vulnerable to the hazards of climate change. All schools will have to join in the effort to reduce the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. As many have noted, this is our future: we don’t have any other choice but to figure it out.
Please share your ideas of how we can help schools go green. And let us know how the effort is going in your schools and districts!
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I welcome this information. I have long been frustrated by the fact that my children’s school recycles no paper! Yet they produce so much of it as waste. When anyone asks why, we’re always told that the custodians won’t accommodate recycling. It really is a crime, and such a bad example for our children.
Also, those foam cafeteria trays are the worst. But apparently it costs money to switch to biodegradeable trays and any school that wants to do that must raise the funds itself.
I think there should be mandates for schools to do this kind of recycling and environmentally responsible actions.
Comment by A Parent — August 3, 2009 @ 11:55 am
This is great news! Getting kids on board to help will make these standards easier to implement, as well as teach kids a positive example they can bring home with them. Environmental awareness should be a basic part of schools’ curricula at this point.
I also find the styrofoam cafeteria trays distressing but wonder what a cost-effective alternative could be. And, I think everyone involved in school (teachers, parents, administrators) can cut way down on paper (and printer ink) use before we even get to the recycling stage. Doing so would be healthier for the environment and also help ease budgetary cuts a bit.
Comment by Claiborne — August 3, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
Getting involved in greening schools is vital to our children’s future. Greening can be cost effective and will help to clean up the environment.
Comment by teresa arboleda — August 3, 2009 @ 2:37 pm
Obviously, there is no one overseeing how much wasted energy is happening at area schools. PS 162 in Queens is lit up every night until morning. Every window all night long has a light on. In addition, the school has very bright lights everywhere outside the building and on the roof (even though there are street lights up and down this street). The lights certainly haven’t helped with security, large groups of kids hang out there all night long because the lights are so bright they light up the basketball courts in the attached playground. Since there are no textbooks at this school, many assignments come home on xeroxed paper. Perhaps if the school invested in textbooks for our kids less paper would be needed, not to mention all those repetitive notices that I throw straight into the garbage. Going green sounds good but I doubt anything will actually change.
Comment by queens parent — August 3, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
This is great.. I hope it really happens
Comment by public school student — August 3, 2009 @ 10:21 pm