CREATE A VISION TO ACT WITH INTEGRITY: SUSTAINABILITY AT THE UPPER SCHOOL

Ben Rich , Upper School Science Teacher and Sustainability Coordinator

The Upper School community is actively working toward improving our sustainability by reducing our footprint in a variety of ways. There are three student groups focused on sustainability and environmental protection in different forms.

The Environmental Action Club (EnAct) does great work educating the student body about how to be better stewards of the earth and they have regular directed conversations about topics such as COP27 in Egypt, single use plastics, and they recently took a field trip to physically remove invasive plants from a nearby park. The Carbon Neutral Commitment Committee (CNCC), whose mission is to convince the school’s leadership to commit to going carbon neutral by a specific date, is led by a dedicated group of seniors who took AP Environmental Science last year, and they want to make a meaningful impact on the most important crisis of our time. The Surfrider Club organizes beach cleanups in the fall and spring to make a direct impact on the health of New Jersey’s vast coastal ecosystem.

Sustainable efforts are visible all around campus whether you are enjoying the LEED Silver certified Johnson Academic Center, the Green Roof, or visiting the student or faculty parking lots where you can see more electric vehicles each month. All three campuses have EV charging stations, which allow our city-dwelling faculty members to charge at work and open the possibility of EV ownership to more community members.

In addition, the roofs at the Upper School have been upgraded and are now ready for solar panels. Sustainability is also interwoven throughout the curriculum, and you’ll find students working on art projects with found materials, projects in French class about pollution across the globe, history classes highlighting the environmental factors leading to conflicts, and of course environmental science field trips studying water quality in nearby streams.

We strive to gain knowledge of our impact on the environment to create a vision in which we act with integrity to protect the precious resources of our planet.

The Green Roof has space to hold class, is home to pollinator plants to encourage bees and butterflies in the local ecosystem, allows students to grow hyper-local vegetables to serve in the cafeteria, and provides space for community members to compost waste using two compost barrels