EarthCARE at Emily Carr Middle School

A small but enthusiastic group of students work hard at the school to promote EarthCARE and activities throughout the year. We care about the environment.

There are many ways we promote EarthCARE in our school and community:

• Invited a special guest, Mike Gerbus, to speak to the students, his effective PowerPoint presentation expressing the inconvenient truth of global warming encouraged the students to continue to "Go LOCO" (lights off, computers off!)
• As part of the "Go LOCO" campaign, every month we award the Golden Dustpan award to the most energy efficient classroom
• Recycling is a big part of what we do at Emily Carr, we sort through the recycling to make sure everything is in the proper bin
• We reuse papers that were previously discarded
• We do not print our newsletters anymore instead, we post them on the school website
• The Lunch Lady program that enables the students to order hot lunches through the school created an unwanted amount of garbage. We resolved this problem by asking the students to bring the remnants and containers home since they can be recycled at home and not at school
• We plant flowers in the spring
• We participate in the Spring Clean-up by tidying up our yard and working together to make a difference
• We collect pop tabs to send to Clifford Bowey School who recycles them and uses the money earned to help refurbish the equipment needed for the handicap students

EarthCARE incentives are awarded to individuals who aid in the preservation of our earth by continuously "Going Loco." If EarthCARE members see that a student or a group of students are recycling and turning off the lights, we have the great privilege of awarding them with EarthCARE incentives.

An idea we have here at Emily Carr is to have a day, probably on a day when it is sunny, that we don’t use any lights. The windows let in a lot of light themselves so we would only need to use artificial lighting in rooms that have no windows or those that receive a small amount of light.

We hope we have encouraged others to make a difference.