Green team.
Holy Family Catholic School teacher Valerie Nixon (right) joins members of her green team on the last day of school to celebrate their newly earned gold status in the Eco School program.
Emma Jackson
It’s easy being green for students of Holy Family Catholic School, who were awarded with gold status in the Ontario EcoSchools program at the end of June.
Holy Family’s green team members made it their goal this year to become a certified EcoSchool through the mainly ministry-funded program, which is run by a steering committee made up of members from various Ontario school boards.
Each year, schools looking to become certified must perform a review of the school’s electricity use, waste levels, greening of school grounds, curriculum links and several other categories to see where the school can improve environmentally. Then the green team makes an action plan to address any issues revealed in the review, and at the end of the school year students conduct another review to monitor improvement.
Through a number of projects – most notably the green bin pilot – the Hunt Club-Uplands school off Cahill Drive West was certified with the highest status a school can receive.
“I’m just so proud,” said green team leader and Grade 4 teacher Valerie Nixon, who said it’s especially exciting that the school received gold status on their first try. To get gold, the school had to score 75 per cent or higher in every single category – a feat that involved green team members making sure lights and monitors were turned off each night, sorting and auditing green bin material, encouraging litterless lunches and launching awareness campaigns.
Nixon said the grounds greening category was probably their weakest category, but they were saved by the school grounds having many mature trees.
Nixon said next September she hopes to implement a ban on disposable water bottles, and start a grounds greening project as well.