Sydenham High School celebrates Earth Day

Apr 29, 2010

Shelby Vickery explored using tap water as a form of electricity at Sydenham High School’s Earth Day Carousel.

On April 22 as part of their focus on Earth Day, students at Sydenham High School participated in the Earth Day Carousel, a display of student projects whose focus was the environment.

Included in close to 40 displays were a number of projects that focused on environmental awareness and various practical strategies and solutions to reduce our carbon footprint.

Kieran Doyle, Jen Pople and Rachel Givens did a garbage audit of Sydenham High School, in which they examined 18 bags of school garbage that were collected on April 8.

Their findings were an eye opener- of those 18 bags only two were actually garbage. Four could have been recycled as paper; another four could have been recycled in blue boxes and the last four could have been composted. After crunching the numbers the group found that 89% of the garbage collected could have been recycled.

Doyle said about the project, “It was a messy job but it was well worth it since the statistics showed us that yearly SHS produces 37,000 pounds of garbage. We learned that if students made more of an effort to recycle, that number could be reduced by 27,000 pounds." Doyle hopes the results of the study will go a long way in raising student awareness and that after seeing the numbers, students will be motivated to take those 20 extra steps to the recycle bin.

Shelby Vickery, in her project titled “Tap Water: A Form of Electricity”, demonstrated how household tap water can be used to conduct electricity. Her display demonstrated how an electrical current produced from 6 glasses of house tap water is enough to produce 3 to 6 volts of electricity - enough to power a calculator and according to her, other household items like lamps. Shelby explained, “The technology could be used in emergency situations and for other household items that don’t require too much electricity.”

Tyler Hill, Adam Wilson, Brianna Jeffreys and Chris Lafontaine made a pop can solar heater that can be used as a home heater and another group explored the environmental impact of oil spills.

Most of the projects developed from Erik Rutherford’s grade 12 class on Human Environmental Resource Management. The day’s events also included a school-wide clean up of the Sydenham community, a BBQ, karaoke and a concert by Rock Bottom at the football field.

The day’s aim was three-fold: to explore various issues and alternative green options, and to raise students’ awareness of environmental issues while making a practical contribution to cleaning up the school and community.

Sydenham High School’s Assistant Vice Principal Kelly Roantree was pleased with the day’s event, and as acting chair of the school’s eco-team, is hoping to see the school take on more green initiatives in the near future in the hopes of earning gold status eco certification for this year. Last year the school received a bronze medal.