New Buffalo Middle/High School recognized as a ‘Green School’

New Buffalo High School/ Middle School has been recognized as a Michigan Green School.

The Michigan Green School Program was established in 2006 and is given to public and private schools for their environmental efforts and ecological practices. This award shows that New Buffalo High School/Middle School has shown efforts to encourage students to sustainably use resources, create a healthy ecology around us and focus on environmental education.

New Buffalo Envirothon designs, builds and presents to the public solar heat collectors designed to heat in the winter. This reduces the use of fossil fuels contributing to global warming.

New Buffalo Area Schools uses a solar heat collector to heat the maintenance garage, which warms the equipment for easier engine starts. New Buffalo Area Schools installs and maintains energy efficient systems district wide. They also cover a unit on renewable energy in the Envirothon course.

New Buffalo High School is participating in activism regarding the environment.

Envirothon is a class offered to students to teach them how the environment functions and how to identify native and invasive organisms. Because of this class, students have spent lots of time outside observing the environment, and are able to make a positive impact in the surrounding area. Recently, students taking the class have been learning about invasive species and how to control them. One of the biggest forms of activism that New Buffalo High School has been involved in is taking students on field trips to help with beach clean-up, which lasts up to two days with two different class periods participating.

From May 10-11, Envirothon students picked up trash at New Buffalo Public Beach. Students discovered that trash pickup takes an enormous amount of effort and time.

Overall, Envirothon serves as a platform to promote environmental responsibilities and raises awareness of ecological issues.

New Buffalo High School has many initiatives that promote reducing, reusing and recycling, which ultimately teaches students the importance of reusing items.

The school has installed automatic water bottle fountains to reduce the number of plastic water bottles being wasted. Plastic salad containers from the school lunch are saved to grow plants to sell to collect funds for a cancer charity.

Solar heat collectors are installed in the maintenance building to heat the tractors and other ground equipment. These solar heat collectors are made by recycling 169 pop cans donated by community members, and the school offers a training session to teach the community members how to build energy-saving solar heat collectors themselves.

Recycled plastic, aluminum and paper are reused for other school based projects, including aluminum cans used in solar heat collectors. The plastic salad containers and breakfast cups are used to grow plants, which are sold to the community. Designated recycling bins, which middle school volunteers collect weekly, are abundant throughout the classrooms and hallways.

Students are well aware of the importance of recycling and use these frequently.

New Buffalo Area Schools engage in green practices through reducing, recycling, activism, energy conservation, and other Earth benefiting activities. These practices help the school by being more environmentally proactive, engaging students to be more self aware about the planet and the conditions of it. By helping students to use these skills now, they will be able to use them later on in life and to teach others how to live sustainably through reusing, reducing, and recycling.