ETHS students undertake sustainability projects with Climate Action Accelerator
A Climate Action Accelerator event last November fostered new plans for environmental advocacy at Evanston Township High School.
Hosted by Climate Action Evanston, November’s meeting brought students together to brainstorm and discuss potential sustainability projects that could be implemented at ETHS.
Since then, students have reduced school waste, advocated for climate curriculum in classrooms and explored battery recycling initiatives.
John Crawford, ETHS’ director of operations and sustainability, said the brainstorming primarily focused on smaller-scale sustainability projects that the students can accomplish in a single school year.
CAE board member, E-town Sunrise hub coordinator and ETHS senior Izzy Franconeri said the shorter timeline pairs better with school-based climate activism.
“The school year is only 180 days,” she said. “We just (have) very short timelines to get things done, and then once the summer starts, people kind of fall off.”
Franconeri added that the Climate Action Accelerator event also helped establish a dedicated space for students to discuss climate action within their schools.
More “casual and collaborative” than other spaces, such as board meetings, she said the November event helped develop new initiatives and pair students with existing projects.
“You just need the people to do it and these help us find the people to do it,” she said. “It’s helpful to pair projects to people.”
This year, ETHS’ Sustainability Committee student group decided to reduce waste within the high school, an idea that was fleshed out at the Accelerator.
After conducting a waste audit of the entire school, students found that over 350 trash cans could be eliminated from campus, diverting over 64,000 garbage bags from the landfill each school year.
Crawford, who worked closely with students on the project, said after the waste changes were implemented in February, “not everyone was happy.”
However, as the rationale behind the student-led project was explained, Crawford added, “almost everyone was understanding.”
“We’re seeing the results now of far less waste bags, but, also, people are throwing out their garbage with intent,” Crawford said.
During a February Evanston Township High School District 202 board meeting, Franconeri reported that students have also been meeting with department chairs to integrate climate curriculum into ETHS classrooms through the Accelerator.
The goal, Franconeri said, was to have classes approach climate change and how it affects the community holistically throughout all four years, “not just as a check box during a freshman year biology.”
While still in its early stages, Crawford said that students have begun a new waste-related project based on discussions at the accelerator. Inspired by Illinois’s Portable and Medium-Format Battery Stewardship Act, which went into effect in January, they hope to tackle battery recycling at ETHS.
Beyond the Accelerator, some ETHS students said they have also been inspired to pursue independent sustainability projects.
Senior Olin Wilson-Thomas has been heading a student-led initiative to construct a bike rack outside of ETHS’s Entrance 2.
“As I’m going through school, I’ve been seeing lots of issues, primarily locally, that need to be addressed, and there’s not always a person that’s willing or able to kind of take a stab at it,” Wilson-Thomas said. “I’ve been lucky enough to get a couple opportunities to make some impacts around the community.”
The project has received an independent $5,000 philanthropic grant and ETHS students have partnered with architectural engineering students at Northwestern to design the structure, according to Wilson-Thomas.
Throughout her time at ETHS, Franconeri said that climate change has always been “existential” for her, noting that in just 18 years, she has already seen the landscape and climate of Evanston change.
To her, ETHS’ participation in the Climate Action Accelerator offers an accessible starting point for other students to get involved as well.
“A lot of students also feel that, they just don’t necessarily know where to start,” she said. “I feel like it’s totally worth all of this extra free time that I spend on this to make that a little easier for my peers. Because it can’t just be me, it can’t just be Olin. It has to be everyone.”
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