Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
Reducing School Footprints.
Rising CO2 levels are a big problem in the world today. I was thinking of ways to reduce school waste and their carbon footprint to see if there was anything kids at our school could do to change. My school has already installed all LED lights and also composts, but thought that it might be a good idea to eliminate the rest of the plastic that we use (or as much as possible) and then I thought to compensate every student could receive a reusable water bottle to use at school. We could even do more hands on activities that use less paper materials.
I definitely agree. My school is switching over to fully compostable juice boxes for our cafeteria. Currently we use cardboard and plastic ones that cannot be composted. These new juice boxes will have no plastic straw, be made out of paper, and have a wax cover on them. We will also no longer have the problem of the non compostable juice boxes being put into our compost.
It would be good for the school to have a garden that grows food for some of the school meals and have recycling workshops that are more useful than some of the classes we have. Children should learn how to recycle and care for the environment and not just listen about it.
I think that schools should inform students more about rising Co2 levels and motivate them to change some daily habits which cause rising. Also schools need to put more recycling bins for papers, plastic etc.