Think Globally Act Locally | The Power Of R

There’s really no other way to describe it. Highland Secondary’s Eco Team is on FIRE! Coached by master teacher Jill Peacock and myself with The Power Of R, Highland Eco-Team is setting new standards for rethinking, reducing, reusing and recycling in schools on Central Vancouver Island.

Every Monday at lunch hour a group of 12 students meet to plan their next project. Naturally, big projects require several after school meetings also. These dedicated young men and women are so hardcore that they only eat vegetarian pizza, recycle everything, and shut off all of the lights except one reading light for meetings, “just to save a bit of power.” Why not?

There are over 1000 people at Highland Secondary. Over the past two years Highland’s Eco-Team has hosted two major Earth Day Celebrations and started to extract invasive plant species around the school. They have planted native plant species and brought awareness of environmental issues to the school and community. That’s impressive but since September 2009 they‘ve really started to heat up.

Pizza boxes have been a big problem at Highland along with food packages and paper bags. Paper products alone were filling multiple dumpsters a week. The Eco Team decided to start a recycling program for paper products and cardboard at the school. Inevitably everyone has adopted the idea. Several dumpsters a week are being diverted from the landfill due to these efforts. Students and Eco Team members handle the emptying of cardboard bins each lunch hour to make the program work.

Composting was the next item on the agenda. There are over 200lbs of compost per day that are sent to the landfill from Highland. Old apples, fruit peels, and carrot sticks get tossed into the garbage to live out their eternity compressed in an airtight sludge. The Eco Team decided to change all of that by adding compost buckets to classrooms around the school. Power Of R and Comox Strathcona Waste Management then donated some composters and some composting education to the Eco Team.

So then the hard part began. The Eco Team deliberated on how to launch this new concept to the school. “How do we go about it? What approach will work best? Will people even do this?” There were many questions but after several after school meetings and lunch hours and pizzas and discussions, an assembly at the school was called. I was honored to be the guest speaker for the event. I talked about the longevity of trash in the landfill. Taking simple steps to sort our rubbish is the difference that the world needs because almost everything can be reused or recycled. The presentations throughout the assembly were great. Dramatic poems, effective addresses, passionate solutions introduced a new way of life for Highland that would only be new for one day.

Today Highland’s Eco-Team is expanding its membership. Composting is a hit. A battery collection bin has been placed at the front entry way for household batteries. Highland’s Eco Team has been attending Comox Town Council meetings to make Comox carbon neutral by 2012. To compliment their effort, Comox has just announced a Blue Box recycling program and pick-up for every school in Comox. Not only is this is a major accomplishment, it is precedent setting for a school in the Comox Valley. The Eco Team is now recycling ink cartridges in the office, computer labs and library to reduce plastic trash. Vending machine products are soon going to be under threat for their packaging material choices. Energy use in the school is also going to be addressed in a serious and now creditable manner. Highland’s youth are taking control of their planet. Their school is simply part of it. I’m proud to be involved in such an incredible group of youth in this time of history. On top of all that, other schools are taking notice. Carihi High will soon be launching an extensive compost program of their own. They’ll also be collecting batteries and recycling their trash. Politics… are just around the corner.

For more information and to include your school in the next evolution of environmental action contact me at powerofr@gmail.com