By Evan Register ’25 and Angus Cook ’25 Editor’s Note: The authors made a statement at the November 12 Planning Commission hearing about a proposed apartment complex across Pickett Road from Durham Academy Upper School. …
Today, there is an electrician named Luis Ossa working in a lift to remove giant antique light bulbs– 400 watt metal halide lamps–from the ceiling of the Lower School Gym. He is working in the …
A number of people have expressed a desire for more information about what’s happening with sustainability at DA and in the surrounding community. Diane Daly is answering the call with this first edition of our …
On September 21, 2024, the Upper School Sustainability Committee waged its second attack on Tree of Heaven in some forested property that the school owns on the west side of Ridge Rd. This effort was …
Every year, when faculty and staff assemble for opening meetings, we come with varying degrees of readiness but generally high hopes for the school year. Amid grand plans, training sessions, and endless details, we devote …
What happens to your Nike’s when you are done with them, and how you can get the most out of them?
Whether or not you play a sport, run recreationally, or simply play a pick up game every once in a while, running shoes are probably a part of your life in some shape or form. I personally have been a runner since I was 10, competing in middle school, and now just enjoying it recreationally. I am very familiar with the process of buying new running shoes…and wearing them out. And as much as I love the activity, our running shoes have a less than savory life before and after us.
As a volleyball player, and libero at that, I find myself going through a pair of kneepads every season. Sometimes it’s because the padding gets worn down or because the sleeve gets holes in it or because they just get so disgusting after getting drenched in sweat every day for three months straight. After the kneepads are no longer usable, at least in the user’s opinion, they just get thrown away. This feels like a waste! Because of this, I explored what is in volleyball kneepads, how they get made, and how they could become more sustainable.
The Life Cycle of a Durham Academy Baseball Uniform
Baseball uniform in use
Every DA baseball player has three uniforms. How do they get here? Where do they go after their time on the field? The components of the uniforms can be found by going the website where they’re ordered: the BSN Vault. The specs for a Nike baseball uniform reveal that our uniforms are 100% polyester, a material that is created from crude oil, ethylene, ethylene glycol, as well as para-xylene, combining to make polyethylene terephthalate. This is strained to make conventional polyester. Next in the production process, the creation of the actual uniforms.
Who or what gets you excited about sustainability? Students in the Environmental Sustainability in Action class share their thoughts. Replies and additional examples welcome! Please include your name and DA affiliation with your post.
I believe that hope the most important thing in climate actions because it is the path to motivation which leads us to action. — Amelia Fay ’25
I like your idea of how improving one thing can lead to another. Improving the bike trails will get people more into biking which could reduce car pollution. — Chase Brown ’25, replying to classmate Miranda Bridgeford ’26
Durham Academy buys two bags of 12 SELECT soccer balls every two years for each varsity soccer team. The balls are labeled as practice balls. This means the quality of the ball is not as nice as a game ball.
From Sole to Soul: The Extraordinary Journey of a Sock. Yarn to landfill the nike elote sock goes through many phases.Though the sources of the materials used in these socks seemingly is kept under lock and key the movement of these socks before they reach the consumer can be found, Starting in a factory in Vietnam the dry fit and polyester are processed and spun into yarn. This yarn is shipped to China where the sock panels are sewn together to make the sock form. Then they take a 8,000-mile trip to Houston Texas where they are stocked and packages to be ordered online or shipped to stores. Though we wear socks every day we don’t often think of the process of taking that thin piece of fabric that separates our feet from our shoes from Vietnam, to China, to Houston, and finally to your sock drawer. If we truly want to become sustainable it is important for us to examine the production of objects we use in our everyday life.
A sock, in the eyes of most people, seems quite harmless, yet it is far from it. The Nike Elite sock is 75% polyester and 25% dry fit. Polyester is derived from petrochemicals, which are non-renewable fossil fuel resources, and the production of polyester requires large amounts of energy and water. Along with polyester’s direct greenhouse gas emitition, it is also particularly not bio-degradable leaving behind microplastics that further contribute to the pollution of our environment and air. The large amount of transportation used to just simply in the production of the sock is largely by plane and as we know jet fuel is a main contributor to our current climate crisis.
Consider the opportunity to change as something important to our current generation. Small victories are a way to work towards greater ones.
For example, the opportunity to change the type of marking paint we use on our fields in order to help our athletics department to be more sustainable in the future. For our fields at DA, the standard field paint is World Class Field Paint by BeaconAthlectics. The paint is 100% acrylic, CaCO3 free, and “turf-friendly”.
“Should I stay or leave?” That is the question that Denise Robinson from the Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) leading us through Sampson county asks herself every day. With the smell from the hog waste and landfill a constant presence, and accessing clean water and pure air almost impossible, it is an understandable question. Yet for now, it seems that she and her colleagues are staying, as EJCAN has launched a project testing the water in Sampson county, and monitoring the air quality. A minibus full of DA students toured Sampson County with Sherri White-Williamson, Denise Robinson, and Christian Felipe where we had the opportunity to learn about their work and the context around environmental justice in local government and rural areas.
Seeing where our waste goes and the price that comes with our food can be helpful in steering us towards better actions.
The runoff of hog waste that contains toxic growth hormones and other antibiotics is just one of the reasons that their research so far has only proved that the water in Sampson County is dangerous for its residents. Yet they have to walk an extremely delicate line.
Think about all the lights you use throughout the day. More specifically, picture yourself in Kirby gym. There are 120 light bulbs, each with a specific life cycle and environmental impact. In a world where environmental sustainability is becoming a much bigger conversation, we often look for complex and big ways to reduce our carbon footprint, but sometimes these solutions are simpler than they seem.
On October 1st, DA sustainability committee members, DA faculty members, parents, and experts came together to fight a common enemy: Tree of Heaven. It’s an invasive species from China that is spreading in east coast forests at an alarming rate. Another reason this tree is a problem is that it harbors the spotted lantern fly, an invasive insect that feeds on vegetation such as grapes, apples, hops, walnuts, and other hardwood trees.
Learning from the Master, Pete SchubertLearning more from the MasterParker and Thomas identify speciesShreya, Thomas, and CharlesSpecies IdentifiedMerritt in action
During a long ago renovation project at the Upper School, DA acquired an 11 acre plot on Ridge Road as a drop zone for construction equipment. After years of disuse, this lot has turned into a grove filled with Tree of Heaven. The Biodiversity Subcomitee of the Student Government Sustainability Committee organized a workday to tackle this problem. Ms. Caruso (DA environmental science teacher) and Peter Schubert of the North Carolina Invasive Plant Council provided supplies and taught the group how to attack the trees. One method is “Hack and Squirt”, where on a bigger trees, one person uses a hatchet to make a diagonal chop for each inch of tree diameter into the base of the tree. Another person sprays a 20% Glyphosate solution into the chops while a third spray paints the tree to mark that it has been treated. On very thin trees, we used the “Cut and Paint” method: one member cut the trunk straight through and another dabbed the cut surface with Glyphosate. Lastly, there was a team that went around picking up trash and identifying the native and non-native plant and animal species that could be found in the lot.
After several hours of effort, the work group had treated and/or cut roughly 200 trees in the grove. While we did great work out there, the job is far from finished and it will take many visits and treatments to fully eradicate the Tree of Heaven from the property. DA hopes that this area can be used as a place for sustainable education and future labs.
