Carpooling

In an effort to mitigate its carbon footprint (WA has signed the Green Schools Climate Commitment – GSCC , pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020), carpooling has become formalized at WA. Two weekday carpooling spots were added in the Gym Parking Lot for seniors. Only cars with 3 or more students can be parked in these spots up until 10 minutes before the start of the school day, after which anyone can use the spots. In the Kingsley Parking Lot, faculty have one carpooling spot which requires two or more passengers and follows the same time limits as the Gym lot. This past fall, the WA Environmental Club drafted a proposal to the Headmaster requesting that the school begin a carpooling system.

WA Composting

This year Worcester Academy began composting its food waste from the dining hall at the neighboring Charlie Buffone Garden, which is run by community members and Oak Hill CDC. Environmental Club members have been managing the composting program as one part of the new “O Waste” program at WA, which when applied to the dining hall challenges people to take only what they will eat, avoid choosing items that can not be composted, and compost napkins and food scraps that can not be eaten.

Winter time means slow going for compost, but after middle school students and members of the 9th grade Environmental Science class helped “winterize” the garden. For more info click on Charlie Buffone Garden. Last year composting took place at the East Campus Garden while this year the focus shifted to expanding the school’s connections local agricultural networks.

Protecting the Blackstone River

This cool, brisk Saturday morning WA students worked with the city to raise awareness within the neighborhood about pollution of our local waterway. Students stenciled catch basins and dropped off fliers and information sheets to households. Rain run-off from the upper level of campus and west flows into the Blackstone River  (45 mile long river that is fed by headwaters throughout the Worcester area and that flows to Narraganset) and to the east into the Broad Meadow Brook, which in turn feeds the Blackstone further to the south.

Capable of destruction of fish and wildlife, loss of aesthetic value, and of threats to public health through food, water supplies, and recreation, run-off water pollutants include pet waste, oil and other vehicle fluids, lawn fertilizer, pesticides, hazardous wastes, and physical objects such as yard debris and litter.

For more information on Worcester’s Storm Water Management Program call 508-799-1480, go to dpw, and/or go to the EPA site for sewer line risk information ssoenweb.pdf

8th Graders Participate in Community Harvest

Last spring as seventh graders, members of the class of 2013, planted seed at the Brigham Hill Community Farm in Grafton, MA. On Friday September 12th, they returned to harvest the crops as part of a Community Harvest Project. Harvest produce is donated to the Worcester County Food Bank, which serves 50,000 people throughout Worcester county. For more information click: communityharvest.shtml

WA-Oak Hill CDC CFL Drive

As part of the WA-Oak Hill CDC CFL drive to distribute over 2,000 energy saving CFL bulbs to the school and neighborhood community, students from WA and North High School spent three afternoons installing bulbs into neighborhood apartments along Providence and Aetna St as well as in units of a senior residence building on Upsala St.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL’s) use up to 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs, and last up to ten times longer. CFL bulbs reduce greenhouse gas emissions, smog, acid rain, and mercury pollution. From the government’s Energy Star website: “If every American home replaced their 5 most frequently used light fixtures or the bulbs in them with ones that have earned the ENERGY STAR, we would save close to $8 billion each year in energy costs, and together we would prevent the greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from nearly 10 million cars.”

However they need to be managed properly when broken and recycled when spent. See CFL Bulb Links to the right.

For a direct list of locations in Massachusetts for recycling old bulbs click on RecyclingCFLs

4,000 lbs of Electronics Recycling

In a collective effort the Environmental Club co-president, Steve Wright, Mr. Carroll’s Environmental Science Classes, members of the Maintenance Department, and Mr. Delaney filled up two school vans with over 4,000 lbs of T.V.’s, computer monitors, hard drives, and a long list of other electronics for drop off at MeTech International, a world leader in management and recycling of electronic materials with a 32 million pounds per year capacity, located along the historic Blackstone River.

In 2007, the United States placed an estimated 500 million PC’s (11 million tons) into the “waste” management stream. Metech performs reuse, recovery, and reclamation of parts whereby precious, ferrous, and toxic metals (cadmium, arsenic, lead, etc.) as well as plastic, glass, and cardboard are recycled, burned for energy, or isolated and manged as hazordous waste, The end result is a dramatic reduction in air/soil/water pollution, deforestation, strip mining impacts, and fossil fuel and energy consumption. For more information on Metech go to METECH and WAEnvironment

Renewable Art

Reusing random materials for their sculpture projects Ms. Duff’s students inspire us to see the potential in creative approaches to sustainability actions during a recent exhibit in Walker Gallery.

Renewable Energy at WA

The solar demo displayed above is 3, 12 watt portable panels set up on the Radar Quad. Each panel converts light radiation energy into electrical energy as dc current which charges the same batteries used with the pedal-a-watt. Pictured above students ride the “pedal-a-watt” bike which generates electricity that charges a battery which in turn can charge phones, laptops, the gym stereo, etc.

WA’s First Earth Week April 22-25

The Environmental Club and WA were busy this week with a host of events and actions steps including
1) Upper School Assembly Presentation by the Environmental Club
2) Off-campus CFL Bulb Drive
3) Film Series: Crude Awakening
4) Kettle Brook #2 Clean Up
5) Solar and Bike Powering/Demo Stations

In the assembly the Club covered a review of climate change and greenhouse gas dynamics and how each of us are connected to and the impacts of our of food, power, fuel, and waste use/production. The Environment Club distributed approximately 500 energy saving bulbs to the WA off campus community. Thursday night the Club hosted a showing of the documentary “Crude Awakening”, the first in a series of films covering sustainability issues, which addressed the realities and complexities of peak oil. Finally, students rode bikes and solar panel stations were built that powered batteries which in turn charge computers,etc.

A. Specific steps to be taken (as outlined on Academy News)
1. CFL bulbs
2. Green Start ( http://www.massenergy.com/options.html )-Non-National Grid Members can sign up for the New England Wind Fund
3. GCC Habits
4. Sign up for the Soup, Salad, Bread Meal
4. Unplug all unused electronics
5. Fill up your tires
6. Drive Speed Limit
7. Buy Local/organic Food- Compost

Kettle Brook Clean Up #1

WA Students

Parker-Metals

Kettle Brook Reservoir #3

Kettle Brook Collage

Kettle Brook Res. #1

Kettle Brook Res #2

Kettle Brook Falls

Old Landfill

Kettle Brook Res. #4

As part of their school community service obligation, 10 WA students spent a cold Saturday morning earlier this spring pulling the likes of tires, metal scrap, a metal barrel, and a car fender from the Kettle Brook and its banks as the brook flows along the edge of New Balance Fields.

The Kettle Brook is one of the major northern headwaters of the Blackstone River. One of the most fascinating elements of the brook is how it connects four of the city of Worcester’s drinking water reservoirs before flowing into Cherry Valley, the southwest corner of the city, along New Balance Fields, through an industrial corridor on route to the Blackstone. Pristine pictures of the Kettle Brook Reservoirs, above, obscures the impacts of nearby roads, old land fills, agricultural land, and tributary streams running through neighborhoods. (Click on photos for more details).