Green Schools - Not only environmentally friendly BUT generate cost savings!

Green schools are not only environmentally friendly but also generate cost savings in the
form of reduced water and energy usage. The standard for green schools is LEED, a framework
for building schools that meet certain benchmarks for sustainability.

Many private schools are taking the pledge of the Green Schools Alliance to make their schools
more sustainable and to reduce their carbon footprint by 30% over five years and to achieve carbon
neutrality by 2020. There are steps that parents and students can take separately from their school to
reduce energy usage and waste, and students and parents can also work with their schools to determine
the school's energy use and how to reduce it over time.

Steps Parents and Students Can Take

Parents and students can also contribute to making their schools greener and can take easy-to-implement
steps such as the following:

• Encourage parents and kids to use public transportation or to walk or bike to school.
• Use carpools to bring many students to school together.
• Reduce idling outside school; instead, turn off car and bus engines.
• Encourage the school to use buses with cleaner fuels, such as biodiesel or to start investing in hybrid buses.
• During community service days, have students replace existing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents.
• Ask the school to use environmentally friendly cleaning fluids and non-toxic pesticides.
• Encourage the lunch room to avoid using plastics.
• Spearhead the use of "trayless" eating. Students and teachers can carry their food instead of using trays, and the lunchroom staff won't have to wash trays, thereby reducing water use.
• Work with your maintenance staff to put stickers on paper towel and napkin dispensers reminding students and teachers to use paper products sparingly.
• Encourage your school to sign the Green Schools Initiative.
• Learn other steps you can take at the Green Schools Initiative.

  How Schools Can Reduce Energy Usage

  In addition, students can work with the administration and maintenance staff at their
  schools to reduce the energy usage of their schools. First, students can conduct an audit
  of their school's light and energy use and then monitor the school's energy use on a monthly
  basis. The Green Schools Alliance provides students with a step-by-step plan to create a task
  force and reduce carbon emissions over a suggested two-year time table. Their helpful tool kit
  provides your school with actions you can take such as replacing incandescent bulbs with compact
  fluorescent lights, using daylight instead of overhead lighting, weatherizing windows and doors,
  and installing Energy-Star appliances.

  Educating the Community

  Creating a greener school requires the education of your community about the importance
   of reducing carbon emissions and living more environmentally sustainable lives.
   First, inform yourself about what other schools are doing to become greener .
  For example, Riverdale Country Day School in New York City has installed a synthetic
  playing field composed of cork and coconut fiber that saves millions of gallons of water per year.
   Other schools offer classes in living environmentally conscious lives, and their lunchrooms offer
  local produce that is shipped smaller distances and that therefore reduces energy use. Students may
  be more motivated to make their school greener when they are aware of what similar schools are doing.
  Find a way to communicate regularly to your school about what you are doing to reduce energy
  use through newsletters or a page on your school's website. Get people involved in taking and
  meeting the goals of the Green Schools Alliance to reduce carbon emissions over five years. Over 1,900
  schools, public and private, around the world have joined the Green Schools Alliance and pledged to
  reduce energy usage, and your school can become one of them.
  
  
  
   Grossberg, B. 2014. How to Make Your School Green. [online] Available at: http://privateschool.about.com/od/schoollife/a/Green-Your-School.htm [Accessed: 2 Apr 2014].
  
  
  Making a school Green is not only about the environment but is also cost saving for schools. Helping the environment is not only for educating individuals its about fighting for future generations to ensure they are able to have what we have when younger. Its not only about safety within our environment but looking after the wildlife within our environment. Everything interconnects it is a system where one thing affects another thing and without one thing the chain weakens or breaks dismantling and disabling a working system and making it break down and unusable.
  
  This article shows the different steps parents can take in implementing sustainable initiatives in the home environment and making it a part of their children's lives. Also parents can help in promoting schools to start such initiatives and to put funds towards these initiatives. Communication between parents can help in getting children to school and working together to reduce C02 emissions.
  
  Schools can reduce energy uses and create an awareness how these uses can use energy and be costly for both school and home environment. Through educating students on the matter you can later educate the communities and uniting together to fight for our environment. Introducing programmes that will benefit the schools, homes and environment.