Don't forget about the Green Apple Day of Service!
Get involved and host a project at your school or place of learning! Or support this movement and sponsor one of the inspiring projects that will be taking place.
The Green Schools Committee and USGBC MA Chapter will again participate in Green Apple Day of Service (GADOS) to advance healthy, sustainable schools in 2016! Examples of service projects include indoor or outdoor clean ups, preparing a garden, creating signage that helps to reduce waste, or any other project that promotes healthy schools and community service. See below under resources for a link to more project ideas.
Looking back at last year,
On Sept. 26, 2015, the Green Apple Day of Service brought together thousands of students, teachers, parents and community leaders from around the globe to improve our school environments through service projects, education, community events and more. Our vast network of champions demonstrated the strength and breadth of our movement, leaving a meaningful and lasting local impact on our world’s schools. In the Commonwealth, more than 38 locations showed their dedication to making their schools a better place to learn. On a larger scale, hundreds of thousands of volunteers participated in more than 3,700 events and projects—and took meaningful steps to change where students learn, in all 50 U.S. states and in 42 countries.
Program Overview
The USGBC MA Chapter and the National Center for Green Schools is inviting communities to take action on campuses around the world for the fourth annual Green Apple Day of Service, September 26, 2015. On this day, we are encouraging K-12 and College/University students, teachers, and administrators to devise a school sustainability project, and work with community volunteers, to create positive environmental change. USGBC MA is also inviting professional members of the green building community to serve as volunteer mentors for each project. Mentors will provide planning support, and work with schools to prepare successful one day or a year long project through the Green YOUR School competition.
Boston Green Academy's Report on its Green Apple Day of Service:
Boston Green Academy's 7th grade students participated in a Green Apple Day of Service, which focused on electricity conservation. The service project ran over the course of 4 months. The school received a grant over a year ago to put an e-gauge on their electrical meter, but due to the limited ability of the Boston Public Schools facilities department, it took a full 1.5 years to actually get it installed. The project culminated in an action project where the 7th graders will monitor and record the school's energy use and help the rest of Boston's schools reduce their electricity usage.
By December 2014, the students got the ball rolling. Their 10th Grade Environmental Studies class created a lesson for the 7th graders on electricity, including: how energy is made, how it gets to our school and homes and how conserving energy can help fight climate change. They then taught the lesson through the 7th grade science classes. The 10th graders were really nervous, but the middle schoolers thought they were the coolest and definitely listened to them.
March: The school's energy dashboard system finally went completely online in February. The 7th graders had several lessons where they explored the energy dashboard website. The students played games where they had to search the website and find answers. This helped them become familiar with the website and also helped them equate kilowatt-hours to dollars spent to carbon dioxide emitted. The lessons will culminate in a big action project where the students monitor electricity usage and use that data to help the rest of the school's student body thoughtfully reduce their electricity usage over time.
Austin Blackmon, chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space for the city of Boston, addresses the Northeastern University Energy Conference on Friday in the Curry Student Center. Blackmon, the event’s keynote speaker, talked about the steps Boston is taking to address the impact of climate change. The conference was hosted by the Northeastern University Energy Systems Society. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University.
National Grid was an important sponsor enabling portions of the event to move forward on account of their Green Apple Day of Service mini grant to help the students of Northeastern.
The Conference was attended by over 100 professionals, allowing students at NU and the professionals to share insights and collaborate on today's top energy issues. The conference had a couple of tracks and content throughout the day.
The Suffolk Environmental Law Society and the Asian Pacific American Law Society led a group of students on a tour of two buildings on the campus of Suffolk University in downtown Boston. The purpose of this project was to gain a better understanding of how various energy efficiency practices are implemented into both existing structures and new construction. Through this event, we discovered how our school has already taken steps to improve
energy efficiency and continues to make energy efficiency an important part of every building on campus. The LEED building tour helped to educate our students on the energy efficiency efforts made on campus, and encourage more students to become involved in an energy solution.
The first building, located at 73 Tremont Street, is home to the undergraduate library as well as various administrative offices and a cafeteria. This building was awarded LEED Gold certification in April 2015 and is the flagship building of Suffolk University’s campus. It was interesting to learn how the University turned an almost 100 year old building into a high-tech, energy efficient area for students. The next building, located at 20 Somerset Street was recently completed in the summer of 2015 and is currently awaiting LEED certification. Located adjacent to the John Adams Courthouse, this new state-of-the-art building is home to Suffolk’s business and communications programs. Being built with sustainability in mind, the university is anticipating a LEED Silver certification. Touring these two buildings was both informative and encouraging. Knowing our university is taking steps in its new buildings and existing structures is encouraging and instills a sense of pride in our school.This LEED Tour was a great opportunity for the SELS and APALSA to get our heads out of our books and look around at what our school is doing to reduce their carbon footprint.
Thanks to the U.S. Green Building Council – Mass. Chapter and Eversource Energy for their generous sponsorship, we were able to take action in order to strengthen our awareness and education about LEED certified buildings on our University’s campus. We are determined to continue our efforts, both on and off campus, to reduce energy consumption and to educate those around us on how they can do the same!
Green School Environmental Treasures Tour of Quincy High School
Saturday, October 24, 2015 marked the Green School Environmental Treasures Tour of Quincy High School, a collaborative effort sponsored by the City’s Park Dept.'s Environmental Treasures Program, Planning & Public Buildings Depts. and Quincy Public Schools. There were forty-six attendees, including members of the general public and Quincy Climate Action Network, the school’s Principal, teachers, and members of the student Green Team, the Superintendent of Schools, the City's Energy and Sustainability Director, and representatives of the Park and Planning Departments. The project was made possible by the support of Eversource Energy.
Led by Alex Pitkin and Matt Rice of Symmes Maini, and McKee, two of the architects who designed the building, the tour featured the school’s green design features, including the building’s rooftop photovoltaic array, which spurred discussion of the growing potential for solar as a renewable home-energy source. The school's sustainability club – The Green Team QHS – shared their efforts to obtain a hydration system for use by both students and staff to drastically reduce the use of plastic water bottles. (Please see attached proposal.) Participants also toured the Arts wing, featuring displays of student eco-design projects, such as an upcycled bottle cap dress, and the STEM wing’s green house, one component of the school’s aim to develop a closed loop system in which Culinary students recycle food waste from the cafeteria and open-to-the public cafe to make compost for the greenhouse.
Built in 2010, many attendees had never toured the school and were amazed by the beauty and thoughtfulness of the building’s design aimed at enhancing a collaborative cross-disciplinary curriculum, innovative green features, and life cycle analysis the architects used in selecting sustainable materials. Participants were particularly impressed that freshman students are encouraged to try out each of the technical programs before deciding on a major and several commented that they wished they could go back to high school!
