Green Team Putting Copenhagen Accord into Action
Posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009
The United Nations climate conference ended this weekend in Copenhagen with a soft agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Conference president Connie Hedegaard of Denmark called on the global democratic system to meet “one of the defining challenges of our century.”
As I followed the climate conference with high school students in Honeoye Falls-Lima in western New York, while we hoped that the world would deliver results, we were not waiting for someone else to make necessary changes. We are taking grassroots efforts to make a difference in our school community. For the simple reason that we do not all live in a bubble where we breathe our own air and have access to our own water, we are taking actions to protect our home environment so that it is clean, safe and healthy for ourselves and for everyone in the world.
The Green Team club consists of 50 student members, with a four-person core team that makes decisions on the club’s direction and organizes activities. Green Team students recycle bottles and cans every week that are collected from recycling receptacles placed around the school and purchased with the club’s own funds.
We used to throw the bottle caps in the trash because the company that collects our recycling does not accept the caps. One student researched an alternative way to dispose of the caps and found a company that will accept them and recycle them. We now recycle the bottle caps.
Batteries that are disposed of in the trash leak toxic chemicals into our groundwater. The Green Team collects batteries, people put their names on them, and we randomly pick batteries from the collection; the person who donated that battery wins a gift certificate. We then send the batteries to a company that disposes of them in an environmentally safe manner. Sometimes people need to be enticed by rewards to recycle, and in the end we all win.
The Green Team also is involved in helping the school cafeteria use plastic trays in place of Styrofoam. The environmental class students collect all the paper recycling weekly from the classrooms. It’s a team effort, and the students learned that if you expect someone else to do, it probably won’t get done. Take action in your community. If you want any help with suggestions for recycling in your community, feel free to contact me at andywarnerfleming@gmail.com, and the Green Team students can offer advice. Let’s hope that our world leaders deliver results from the agreement in Copenhagen. And more importantly, let’s get to work making it happen right now.
Andy Fleming is a Cloudveil Inspired Mountain Ambassador.
