Miquon Receives Recyclebank Green Schools Grant Award
Recently, The Miquon School received Recyclebank Green Schools grant funding to assist with a campus-based project entitled, “Fighting the Phantom Menace: Saving Wasted Energy and Water.” Through this program, Miquon is actively teaching students how small changes in behavior can have a big impact on energy and water conservation as stewards of the planet. With this grant, Miquon will engage students in tracking energy and water savings, create campus sustainability jobs, and upgrade lighting and bathroom fixtures.
Over the past five years our school has taken a comprehensive approach to improving energy efficiency practices on our woodland campus. Our remaining area of greatest need is addressing some of the “phantom” energy wasted in our buildings on campus, including lights left on and sinks with aging faucets. This next phase of our greening program will have a two-pronged approach with behavior change and technology to help boost our conservation efforts. We plan to engage the students in awareness of wasted energy through tracking how small changes can create big savings.
We will invest in automatic sensor light switches for bathrooms, LED outdoor lighting and automatic or ADA faucets for bathroom sinks. In Science class, students will use Kill-a-Watt meters to test how much energy different appliances around school (and their homes) use when on and off (but plugged in). Teachers will create classroom jobs related to the behavior changes, such as closing doors and shutting down computers each afternoon. This integrated approach of updating infrastructure, creating jobs in our sustainable school community and tracking the effects on our utility bills will allow our pre-K through 6th grade students to see how their small actions can have a big impact on the world. This awareness will carry with them to their homes and out to the larger community.
–Lisa Zahren, Miquon Parent
