REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE: Students in the Rockhurst High School Eilert Ecology Club take responsiblity for recycling at the school.
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Going green goes over well at local schools
By: Kurt Kloeblen, Staff writer
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Students, faculty and administrations at area schools have gotten behind the green movement in various ways.
At St. Teresa’s Academy two clubs handle recycling. Sophomore Hillary Johnson is a member of Students Assembled for Global Awareness. She said the club recycles for one building on campus while the science club handles the other building.
Hillary said she enjoys participating with SAGA and some of the other environmental clubs she is involved in.
“We do green day facts for the whole school,” she said. “We want ideas that the whole student body can participate in.”
Nan Bone, St. Teresa’s president, said the school takes recycling seriously and is taking many environmental concerns to heart.
“St. Teresa’s is sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph,” Bone said. “If you look at their history they are one of the first environmentalists in the nation. They have a mission of caring for the earth. One of our nuns goes through all the recycling and makes sure it goes to the right place.”
At Rockhurst High School teacher Chris Jensen is the advisor for the Eilert Ecology Club, which handles recycling.
“It was named after a Jesuit brother who came on staff in the 1970s and had an interest in recycling back then,” Jensen said. “He raised a good deal of money through recycling aluminum cans. There is a $400,000 endowment raised by that man.”
Jensen said his club recycles paper, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, cardboard, cell phone and ink cartridges. The club also works to spread the environmental message throughout the school.
Jensen is a model for his students in living green. He lives in Leavenworth, but uses a bicycle and public transportation for most of his commute. Jensen, who served in the military for 20 years and has a son and daughter-in-law in the military, said he finally realized the cost of not being green.
“Since I was in the military and had kids in the military, I had seen the cost of our lifestyle in terms of foreign deployments and occupations,” Jensen said. “Since I have two kids involved in the latest war, it raised my level of concern.
“In 2004, I had kind of a conversion experience after reading a report by the World Wildlife Fund. It shows we have been overshooting the earth’s resources since the 1980s and that we are at 1.2 earth levels right now. I read the reports ands saw the disparity for the footprint in the U.S. … At the same time I read about oil production and peaking oil prices and the decisions became pretty easy.”
Notre Dame de Sion teacher Ellen Carmody said several teachers met at the beginning of the school year in hopes to increase green awareness at the school. Carmody said in doing research the group realized a number of efforts underway and the group has spent much of its time assessing how the school is doing with those activities.
Carmody said teachers took a return earlier this year and used some of their time to discuss plans to go greener. She said a guest speaker talked about how caring for “God’s creation is part of our call as a Catholic school.”
Some of the efforts at Sion include reducing bottled water, selling canvas grocery bags at the school store, recycling and reducing paper use in the classroom. Carmody said teachers are using the Internet to post syllabi and coursework, and are using Google Docs and e-mail for editing assignments.
Carmody said she estimates students at Sion’s lower school are more aware of the green movement than their upper-school peers.
“I believe the faculty and student population are all very aware of the green movement,” Carmody said. “I think that even though we might all have different opinions on issues like global warming and recycling – we can all agree that it is our responsibility to care for all of creation.”
Most faculty and students think going green will become a way of life, and not just at school.
“I think it’s not just because of teachers and students,” Jensen said. “The economy is beginning to respond. Food prices and fuel prices are up. There are more ozone alerts. If we want some curtailment, it’s inevitable things have to change and we have got to get involved.”
Hillary said she continues to learn more about being green from a variety of sources.
“I’ve learned more stuff about being green than I ever knew before,” she said. “I want to spread it on to everyone I know and help my friends to stop being wasteful.”
Bone said St. Teresa’s will continue to look at its environmental impact.
“We are always looking at keeping St. Teresa’s at a small footprint,” Bone said. “I like that word, it really says what were about. The oldies have changed their way and some of us are becoming fanatics.”
Carmody said being green at Sion will mean stepping beyond recycling.
“I think the future for green issues is not so much about how to recycle or what green products to use. I think we will start looking at ‘being green’ as reducing our consumption of goods,” Carmody said.
“Notre Dame de Sion is part of an international community of schools – we are one of 17 schools around the globe. I think that this unique aspect of our school calls us to understand what it means to be a global citizen. The future of green issues at Sion will focus on what it means to be a good world citizen, not taking more than we need and making sure that we leave enough for everyone.”
Contact Kurt Kloeblen at (913) 385-6087 or kkloeblen@sunpublications.com