As the push for businesses and people to become more green continues, local area high schools are also looking for ways to conserve energy as well as to save money.
Anderson New Tech High School's school newspaper, The Pulse, is available online to students and teachers. The high school also scanned the student handbook to the website and have one downloadable form the parents sign and return to the school to prove they have read it.
"We only print 25 hard copies of our student handbook," said ANTHS Principal Pat Allison. "We let the parents know on Back-To-School night where all the information is and how to access it. It's one piece of paper per kid instead of using an entire forest to print the handbook to give to students and have the kids return one piece of paper."
According to Allison, all the classes use moodle, a free open-sourced virtual learning environment that is flexible and has a wide variety of programs to use. The students can submit homework, essays, quizzes and their calendar all from home.
"Math is one of the few classes where we do use paper. Everything else is submitted online. We also don't give many tests, which cuts down on the paper and pencil work," said Allison.
There are blue trashcans around the building that the Associated Student Body club uses for recycling purposes and once every two weeks a teacher takes it to a recycling place and the collected money goes back to ASB.
Anderson Union High School has a recycling program in place with the special education students. They have recycle-only collection bins around the school and the class collects the recyclable materials then uses those funds for trips and parties.
According to Booth, the high school is trying to eliminate any need for hard copies and they recycle paper.
"Most of the information for our parents and the Principal's Newsletter are online. Not only does it save us on the cost of paper, but also on postage because we're not mailing it out anymore," said Booth.
West Valley is doing its part to help out the environment as well. In 2006 the high school installed solar panels on the backside of the high school.
"According to the last report done by PG&E about 18 months ago, we are two years ahead of our scheduled pay-off date of 15 years, and we've had another really long summer, so we are definitely still ahead of our original projection," said WVHS Principal Karl Stemmler.
Once the target goal of energy credit has been met for PG&E, the solar panels will be looped into the high school which will then run off of the power generated by the two acres of solar panels.
Another way West Valley is going green is through the plastic they use in the cafeteria. It is now a biodegradable, corn-based plastic. The school is also phasing out styrofoam from the cafeteria because it is worse for the environment than plastic.
"We can't use the new plastic containers for our hot foods because we have to keep them at 160 degrees and it starts to break down in the heat, but I'm hopeful that technology will get there in the next few years and then all of our containers will be green," said Barbara Camacho, food services supervisor for the Anderson Union High School District.
West Valley is in the process of putting recycle containers in the cafeteria for cardboard, plastic and paper.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
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Max writes:
Plastic has become an important aspect in our lives, can you imagine what kind of care you would get in a hospital if we didn’t have plastic? Some historians are saying that this age will be known as the plastic age. The next time you go to the store take a look around and see if you can find products that don’t have plastic. As important as plastic is to our lives it has also demonstrated some negative side effects and there isn’t any one perfect answer for solving plastic pollution.
Here in the U.S. recycling rates for plastic is less than 30 percent which means a lot of plastic is ending up in a landfill. Many other countries do a much better job of recycling then we do here in the U.S., and our recycling rate isn’t going to improve until the recycling industry develops markets for recycled materials.
Many companies are trying to do something about plastic pollution and are developing more environmentally friendly plastics. There are basically three types of plastics which are considered to be more environmentally friendly which are: Compostable, Degradable and Biodegradable plastics.
Compostable plastics are commonly called Polylactic Acid (PLA) are made from plants. Here is the U.S. most PLA is made from corn. PLA is compostable but must be processed by a commercial composting facility. There aren’t many commercial composting facilities so most PLA will end up in a garbage dump. PLA doesn’t biodegrade quickly so once it finds its way into a landfill it will remain there for a long time.
Degradable plastics degrade through photo degradation and oxygen degradation isn’t biodegradable plastic, they are degradable plastics. Degradable plastic breaks down (degrades) into smaller and smaller pieces until they are too small to see. The plastic doesn’t biodegrade; it just gets too small to see.
The third type of plastic is a truly biodegradable plastic, and will biodegrade leaving behind biogases and humus. A recently introduced biodegradable plastic is the ENSO biodegradable plastic bottle with EcoPure. The ENSO plastic bottle is standard Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic with EcoPure G2 additive. When placed in a microbial environment, the ENSO bottle will attract microbes which consume plastic in either an anaerobic (no oxygen) or aerobic (with oxygen) environment.
There isn’t any one perfect answer that will solve plastic pollution. However, we are working toward a solution that will help.
Max
http://www.ensobottles.com
“Bottles for a Healthier Earth”
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