Pollution is a worldwide issue that organizations have tried to eliminate for years. Landstown High School’s Eco-Club is here to educate students and keep the campus clean.
Eco-Club, a revived organization at LHS, has a goal of raising awareness for taking care of our environment by participating in community service, educational campaigns, and sustainable initiatives.
This club has been brought back by its junior director, Taurance Simmons. He was inspired to get involved after noticing that the recycling efforts at LHS were ineffective.
Simmons states, “I was told that our recycling bins are just thrown in the trash with everything else. So I was like, I want to make a change.”
At the club’s monthly meetings, the officers present a “green” goal for attendees to meet, as well as implement games and activities to keep students engaged in a fun way.
“When we do the poster for New Year’s resolutions or eco bingo, I think that it’s really cute. I feel like it really draws people’s attention and makes them want to come back [to meetings],” junior Eco-Club executive member Aaliyah Alba says.
Through Instagram updates and posters, the club helps inform students on general assembly meetings and how they can get involved in the change of making our campus greener. The club also holds events such as campaigns and field trips that all students at LHS have the chance to participate in.
Currently, the club is doing a recycling program where they collect Takis bags and sauce packets.
“Both of these would normally sit in a landfill for up to 1,000 years before degrading, but if students bring them to us after lunch, we can donate them to the recycling program that we’re doing and they can turn them into building materials and park materials and just give them a second life to reduce that waste,” the Eco-Club sponsor and oceanography teacher, Mr. Brunelle, voices.
Their ongoing social media campaign: #LoveThePlanetLHS is an Instagram hashtag that motivates students to share their eco-friendly actions and appreciation for nature.
“We’re trying to encourage students to get outside and show them doing something eco-friendly or show what they appreciate about our local environments and then to make that Instagram post with the goal of having this big collection of posts that we can kind of display later on,” Brunelle says.
Around the end of first 1st semester, Eco-Club held a Chesapeake Bay Foundation field trip where they brought students to First Landing State Park to learn more about why watersheds and our local habitats are important when keeping the Chesapeake Bay and other waterways clean.
Future events that the club hopes to have are a wildflower garden to help the pollinators in our local area, an oyster restoration with the Lynnhaven River Now association to help revitalize our population of those keystone species, and club picnics to host trash cleanups and beach cleanups.
If you decide to participate in the causes this club offers, not only will you make a difference in our school community, you will encourage others to leave a lasting impact to keep our campus clean.
“Even the small actions that we take can make a big difference,” Mr. Brunelle remarks.
