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The school attained first place in a competition that involved a month-long effort to lower carbon dioxide emissions.
The school won the Go Green Foundation’s first annual Spare Our Planet Challenge on Dec. 3 by achieving the largest reduction of carbon dioxide of all the participating schools. The school defeated a second-place Lincoln High School by eliminating nearly 9000 lbs. more of carbon dioxide emissions during the period from Oct. 5 to Nov. 9.
The contest was between two public schools and three private high schools in the Bay Area. The five participating schools, from first to last place, were Lowell, Lincoln, Drew School, Head Royce and the Urban School of San Francisco.
All five schools reduced a total 239,329.8 lbs. of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by over 4,500 trees in a period of 40 years.
The five schools competed in two divisions (public division and the private division) mainly based on their differences in modes of transportation and total student body populations. “The private schools generally have less students overall and the distances needed to travel are generally greater than that of public schools, and so you just can’t compare the two,” biology teacher Mark Wenning said.
The contest is judged on the number of students who signed up on the Web site (gogreenfoundation.com) and their record of how they traveled to and from their respective schools, such as bus, car, bike, or foot. “All we had to do was report how we got to school for that week and the carbon footprint of each school and each participating grade level is tracked for a four-week duration,” junior Ellen Kuang said, “They’re just monitoring lifestyle habits rather than conducting an experiment.”
Senior Wai To Tsui felt that the activity mainly increased awareness of the rising carbon dioxide emissions and didn’t do much to actually “save the planet.” But in addition to raising awareness, the activity also helped determine where people stand on the issue of Global Warming, according to Tsui.
During the contest, some students remained with their usual method of transportation while a few others changed for the purpose of the contest. Some continued to commute by car, while others changed to riding the bus.
Although the Web site is a hotbed for green awareness, not enough information was provided pertaining to its purpose of helping the planet, according to Tsui. “ Although the Web site didn’t have any information outright, that’s fine since sometimes if information is presented that way, it will make people not want to sign up on the site,” he said. “But instead, the site should have had a bunch of side links that are related to the issue of saving the earth and going green so that if the people want to get more involved it would be provided.”
Many students from the school volunteered to participate rather than being asked to do so in the first Save Our Planet Challenge. Wenning also asked his students to reg-run to spread the word and get more students involved in the event. Despite the large turnout that signed up for the contest, not all had actually updated their progress over the four-week period. “Although we had around 400 students, I was disappointed by the actual participation rate. There were students who only signed up for the site, but didn’t update their carbon footprint every week like they were supposed to,” Wenning said.
Those who did update their progress over the four-week period only had to do so once per week, but some reported that even a weekly task needed effort to do. “I thought it was pretty cool that they'd think of having schools compete to help reduce carbon dioxide, except that I had to remember to report my mode of transportation every Friday night,” Kuang said.
Wenning was also somewhat disappointed with the lack of specificity in the site. “I don’t know what type of numbers or calculations the site used, but I would really want to know how the site derived their results,” he said.
More schools are expected to participate in the event in the upcoming years, according to Wenning. “The event will probably spread to be state or nation-wide,” he said. As we progress further, increased participation in such events is something to look forward to when understanding and dealing with the issue of helping our Earth. |
