沪上国际学校积极推行环保行动 - 2014年05月06日

EVERY day is Earth Day in Shanghai's international schools where going green and environmental awareness are an integral part of student life. Recycle, reuse and reduce are encouraged and taught. Students are actively involved in ongoing "green" projects and campaigns.

"We are starting small but every little bit helps," says Madelaine Barry, fifth grade teacher and sponsor of Grades 5 and 6 Eco Club at Concordia International School Shanghai. 

Concordia's Middle School Eco Club has been busy spreading the "Green Word" around school by posting reminders on washroom dispensers to only use one paper towel. 

Students took a "Lights On" audit to count the number of available lights in each classroom, compared with how many were actually turned on. They collect plastic bottles daily from the lunchroom to be recycled and use the bottle caps for other projects. 

"We joined the High School group in collecting both cell phones and dead batteries and we post simple recycling tips on a bulletin board," Barry says. 

In observance of Earth Day, each of the 24 middle school classrooms last month received a recycled soda bottle terrarium to nurture until the end of school. Then all the plants were transplanted in a large planter to beautify the school lobby.

The High School Green Committee is working with environmental NGO Roots & Shoots on various projects including environmental audits and raising funds for the Million Tree Project. Members are active in recycling programs and helped design the Cafe's new recycling area, planting the green roof and many other initiatives. 

The school's wind turbine generates up to 3,000 watts to power hallways lights. Students also assembled solar panels from donated solar cells and installed them on the school roof, which supplies some power to classrooms.

In Shanghai Community International School's Pudong campus, students are all little gardeners.

Six outdoor garden plots combined with indoor garden spaces provide an ideal outside-the-classroom learning environment for eighth grade science students. 

Throughout the coming semester, the students will be planting seeds, cuttings and seedlings of edible plant varieties, and learning about agriculture and the concepts of plant husbandry and sustainability. 

"We have a soil-generating worm farm that churns through organic waste left over from middle school lunch and a compost system to produce more soil from what the worms cannot eat," says eighth grade science teacher Simon Grimmer. 

Students will also have a chance to visit one of the organic farms supplying fresh produce to Shanghai residents and also a commercial plant market where they can purchase plants and items to improve the quality of their gardens.

Primary students from the Western International School of Shanghai have been recently involved in the Eco-Design Fair, where they put together a colorful and informative display about ways to protect the environment and showcase WISS projects.

The school also works with Roots and Shoots and has numerous green projects for secondary students, such as the Japanese Club's Ecocap movement.

Students are taught to reduce their power usage across the school, for example, by leaving gymnasium lights off when it is not in use and reducing paper use through more online work.

Students maintain an organic vegetable garden on campus; they bring water bottles to school to avoid the use of plastic cups, take many other positive measures day to day.

Student initiatives are encouraged and supported. In one case students ran a "no-electricity day" in which the school ran without power for a full school day.

School recycling is also an ongoing initiative at Yew Chung International School of Shanghai. On the Pudong campuses, the Ecology Action Team oversees this effort.

Students collect paper and cardboard from classroom bins, as well as plastic drink bottles. These are then sold and the money is used to buy trees for The Million Tree Project, a program of Roots and Shoots. 

"A key educational component of recycling is highlighting the amount of products we all use and throw out on a daily basis - with the aim to promote reducing and reusing what we can, to make the individual and the school community more sustainable," says Henricus Peters, one of YCIS Shanghai's teacher-advisers to the Eco Action Team.