Spring has sprung! With flowers blooming on campus, something else is growing at Carondelet as well. Green team is, as their name implies, helping the school go GREEN.
Green Team is a student-led club at Carondelet. It spreads knowledge on sustainability and climate change. Green Team’s main initiatives include mitigating plastic waste, composting, recycling, and leading Carondelet’s yearly Earth Week event.
Green Team works to educate faculty, staff, students, and families about the importance of keeping the Earth alive and lowering our plastic use through social media posts and bulletins. Chloё De Smedt, the sustainability manager for the green team, said, “I use what the team brainstorms together at the beginning of the year to set monthly themes and goals that include bulletin boards, lunchtime activities, videos, and social media posts.”
The main thing she wants to emphasize was, that with many fruits coming into season, it’s good to be conscious of the way fruits are packaged. Many supermarkets use plastic packaging. It’s is safer for the environment to either buy fruit not packaged in plastic or to pick our own fruit if we can.
Green Team also works with groups like the Global Ecobrick Alliance to spread their motivation and impact. The Global Ecobrick Alliance is a nonprofit whose goal is to bring new, more eco-friendly, alternatives to plastic.
This year, the team is accomplishing another major goal to make Carondelet a certified green business— they’ve helped plan solar panel installation, LED lights, and electric car charging stations. Almost all the power used by Carondelet is generated from solar panels. In the past couple of weeks, there has also been electric car charging stations installed in the parking structure at the back of campus.
While it’s not official yet, we are well on our way to getting the green business certification.