School Eco-Footprint Ideas

• Plant a tree or a garden in your school yard using natural methods like composting and natural pest control. Make a sketch, be sure to consider food/water/cover/nesting; plant indigenous species in appropriate places; plant in clusters and multi-level; plant flowers to attract insects and birds; leave dead and dying trees when possible; and plant around water bodies. Organize a schedule of care and maintenance. At harvest time, donate the food to local food banks, or plan an ecologically-friendly dinner for your friends and family.

• Investigate a cafeteria and create criteria about how they could become the first 5N cafeteria. Research what obstacles they might have to overcome to becoming fully 5N.

• Start a car ticket campaign! Design imitation parking tickets. Give them to teachers, parents or fellow students if you see them driving alone and you think they could be travelling in a more environmentally- friendly way. Make sure your tickets have useful information about air pollution, the benefits of walking and cycling and the convenience of public transit. Suggest a donation to an environmental organization for a fine. Download eco-tickets

• Create and organize a panel discussion for the entire community with individuals who deal with different parts of the food system (environmental activist, conventional farmer, organic producer, food advertiser, food processor, consumer, etc.). Create a few questions for debate and provide a moderator. Students could role play the same panel in class by researching each position.

• Create a backyard or schoolyard habitat –Have the class start an annual bird / frog count for your community.

• Design and maintain a garden “mini” insectary to attract and harbour beneficial insects.

• Start a recycling program either in your school, at home, or within the community for harder to recycle items like cellular telephones, ink cartridges, toners or household hazardous wastes. Collect the items at the school and arrange with the parent council to make a monthly drop-off to the recycling authority in your community.

• Start a “Healthy Lawn” community initiative. Lawns absorb and hold water, have a cooling effect on our cities, and promote healthful micro-organisms. Use push mowers and promote a diverse (that means weeds) lawn by not using pesticides.

• Create a walking Wednesday campaign to encourage local students, school volunteers and school staff to bike, walk or commute to school. All participants get to sign a designated running shoe.

• Design a campaign to encourage a school-wide and community “Non-Toxic Home

• Design and develop eco- and science resource boxes, specific to local issues and share the boxes among all schools in the district.

• Create a school or district-wide environmental library (include field guides, resources, materials, etc.)

• Develop a butterfly garden for elementary school children and teach lessons on the development of the butterfly.

• Create a “How-to Host a Sustainable Christmas” classroom book – alternatives to wrapping paper; homemade Christmas cards and gifts; simpler, but better Christmas lighting; services or charitable giving instead of consumables; simplifying gift giving; alternatives to the 10’ Christmas tree.

• Adopt a nearby lake, river, or stream for research and pollution testing; determine the condition of the water and develop solutions such as trash pickups, waste disposal, public regulations for boat use; inform users of positive actions they can take.

• Develop botanical guides to local flora and fauna and share throughout your school. Develop a field guide to local parks and make available to the community.

• Plant and maintain flowerbeds around the school or throughout the community/neighborhood.

• Habitat 2000 is a program from the Canadian Wildlife Federation and the Canadian Wildlife Service. Schools and groups can apply for funding to improve wildlife habitat in their area. An application for funding is available from the Canadian Wildlife Federation.

• Get several classes or the school to contact the Department of Natural Resources to identify areas within the school's jurisdiction that need to be protected or where improvement must be made to save the area. Each area could then be divided into units and each unit be put up for adoption. Schools could then raise money so that an area could be adopted. Once adopted by the school or class, the Department of Natural Resources would use the money to protect and maintain the area. The concept runs on the same idea as adopting a piece of highway. A sign would be put up in the area indicating who its adoptive school or class is. By doing this, water in an area could be cleaned up, garbage collected, energy conserved, etc.

• The Evergreen Foundation believes that community parks and school grounds should be healthy, natural environments full of native trees, shrubs and wildflowers, not landscaped with concrete, chain link fences, and mown green lawns full of pesticides. Download the Lesson Plan on Give Me Back My School: A Back to Basics Approach to Ecological Restoration, by Andrea McInnes and Sandra McEwan at http://www.evergreen.ca/en/lg/lessons/eco_ restoration.html

  Our Common Ground: A Community Naturalization Program provides training workshops, resources, and research documents for people interested in restoring public green space. Emphasis is placed on biodiversity, ecological restoration, reforestation, and community involvement and education.

  Our Learning Grounds Program helps students across Canada transform their school grounds into healthy learning environments where students can learn by seeing, touching, smelling and tasting. Students' involvement, from planning through to planting gives them an increased sense of belonging, ownership and pride for the school grounds.

  We've made cities to live in. Now we have to make them livable. For information contact: The Evergreen Foundation. In Toronto: (416) 596-1495 or e-mail info@evergreen.ca. In Vancouver: (604) 689-0766 or e-mail infoBC@evergreen.ca. Website: www.evergreen.ca.

• Get involved with a conservation organization such as World Wildlife Fund. With WWF you can:
  • Become a wilderness crusader
  • Create your own Panda Club
  • Become a WWF member and receive your own welcome kit, quarterly newsletter, conservation update and special product offers!
  • Join WWF's Schools for Wildlife Program.

  For more information on World Wildlife Fund Canada you can call 1-800-26-PANDA or visit www.wwfcanada.org