How Green Is Your School?
Turtle Island Recycling client Windsor Crossing created a fabulous project this April to get local schools to improve their environmental report card by competing against each other for the title of “Greenest” school.
How Green is Your School? was an astounding success. Read what the Windsor Star had to say:
After winning a $10,000 cheque to build an outdoor classroom, some young Windsor environmentalists showed their green colours Wednesday by celebrating in true tree hugger fashion. Windsor’s Prince Edward Public School took the top prize in a competition fostering green ideas in honour of Earth Day. “I’m going to go hug a tree today,” said Sammy Langlois, 13, a Grade 7 Prince Edward student. “I’m excited, happy, the opposite of crappy.” Windsor Crossing gave out $20,000 to three schools as part of its How Green Is Your School? campaign. About 50 schools entered the contest by pitching environmental projects. A panel of judges whittled the entrants down to three. More than 100 students from the top three schools, along with some local politicians, showed up in an empty Windsor Crossing store space to hear who would be the greenest of them all. Queen Elizabeth school in Leamington took the second prize of $7,000, and Pavillon Des Jeunes in Belle River got $3,000 for third place.
Their plans also included outdoor learning areas. Prince Edward principal Janet Fairall said her school’s $10,000 prize will allow students to have a green sanctuary in their otherwise barren setting. It will include seats for classes, gardens of native tallgrass prairie, a veggie patch and pathways to bird feeders and butterfly and bat boxes. “Classes can go out, sit in nature, do science experiments, watch the wildlife come into the area,” she said. “We’re basically surrounded right now by concrete where they play. This provides an opportunity to go out and learn about nature. They can actually be involved in the planting, get their hands in the dirt, have that experience that many children don’t have in their daily lives. It brings that awareness too, or responsibility and ownership for the community around them.” The students were ready to cash their oversized cheque Wednesday and get things moving. “We just won $10,000, so we can finally put that plan into effect and see how future generations take that plan and what they can do,” said Weiyi Dai, 14. “Since we’re in the middle of the city, we don’t have much opportunity to get out. So we thought it would just be nice if we could just grab a whole bunch of people that are interested in making a good environment, and just simply making the world a better place.”
Written by Trevor Wilhelm, April 22 2009 © Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
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