Jul 19

Summer Camp Goes Green

By Sanju Patel ’23 and Miller Roessler ’24

This summer, Miller Roessler and I have partnered with the Evergreen Summer Camp, DA’s all day summer camp for kids ages 4 through 13. Our goal was to develop curriculum about sustainability for the campers, as well as running the compost program at summer camp. Miller and I both worked at summer camp the year before, so we were excited to get to work. We felt that instituting this curriculum was right in line with our recent conversations with the administrative team about including more sustainability in DA curriculum, which has culminated in the assigned reading for teachers this summer. With this in mind, Miller was tasked with creating curriculum for the summer, while I worked out how to bring compost to DA Summer. 

Compost

child's drawing

Compost was a huge emphasis of the US Sustainability Committee in the past school year. We are thrilled with how it is going in the Upper School, though we’re still trying to catch up to the Middle School! Our next step was to bring that to success the Lower School and DA Summer. After determining that we would be able to have 4 compost bins at the Lower School over the summer, we chose to have compost start out in four locations: outside the camp store, outside the hock building, out front of the lower school, and back behind the lower school. We informed the rest of the staff of our plan, and most of the staff knew the basics about compost. We felt comfortable they would be able to explain how to compost to their campers, and after speaking with CompostNow to iron out the drop off and pick up of the bins, we felt ready for camp to begin. We did a small skit at morning meeting to introduce composting to the campers. However, we didn’t expect that lunch would be allowed to be eaten inside, since we started camp with an indoor mask mandate. That changed just as camp began, and the first week saw less composting than we had hoped for. Putting some bins indoors near the campers’ lunch areas brought significant improvement, and the bins started to fill up. Hopefully, we see even more composting in the last weeks of summer.

Curricululum

Diving into curriculum was a big task! We had no experience with teaching before, and trying to create lessons that kids from all ages could understand was a challenge. We struggled to highlight specific sustainability topics in the beginning with the limited resources we had, but once we did some more exploring into the large variety of books about sustainability, we came up with some exciting lesson plans. For example, in week two, we read a book called Ms. Fox’s Class Goes Green and created posters that advocated for being more sustainable.

child's poster about not littering

In the next three weeks, we will do some more inspiring lessons, like learning about shared resources and finding out what plants need to survive. 

We are so excited for how this summer has gone, and we are so grateful for Ms. Kantz for encouraging us to make Summer Camp more sustainable. Special thanks to Lucy Steiner and Talbot Waters for their work to make the camp store more sustainable, and to Ms. Mack for helping us with the lesson plans. We have learned a lot, and we can’t wait to improve these next few weeks and next summer.

Apr 20

It’s all happening: Earth Week update

120 members of the class of 2022 are doing 50+ projects (with a bit of assistance from upperclassmen)

Thursday, April 21 will be the 1st ever DA Sustainability Fair!

Video by Taylor Winstead

Apr 18

Earth Week 2022

The Class of 2025 and the Sustainability Committee invite you to participate in the world’s largest secular celebration!

Participate on campus:

  • Tuesday–create a trash mural, start the 72 hour Vegan Challenge
  • Wednesday–turn off lights wherever you can, help make chalk art in the quad, sign up for a Climate Change Workshop
  • Thursday–participate in the Sustainability Fair!
  • Friday–bring drinks and snacks in reusable packages, help make Special Olympics a Zero Waste event

Dec 07

Trick or Treat for Sustainability!

By Matthew Sun ’24, Connor Ennis ’24, and Sanju Patel ’23

On Sunday, October 31, 2021, Upper school Sustainability members Sanju Patel, Connor Ennis, CJ Nwafor, Matthew Sun, Siri Oehler, Holly Wilcox, and Nikolas Larson participated in a dumpster dive chaperoned by Ms. Bessias. Leading up to this, we had previously met with Mr. Benson, the Director of Business Services at DA, and discussed our desire to partner with Green-to-go to save money, reduce waste, and reduce emissions. To follow up on this meeting, and to determine if Green-to-go is a feasible option, the sustainability committee organized this effort to analyze the contents of our school’s waste. 

During the afternoon of Halloween, members of the dumpster dive team met in the parking lot by Kenan Auditorium. We emptied the dumpster and pulled trash out of plastic bags, sorting items into compost, recycling, TerraCycle, and trash.

We found that only a third of the stuff in the dumpster was actually trash.

The rest could be recycled or composted, and there was some TerraCycle material, too. There were a lot of paper towels, toilet paper rolls, food truck lunch waste, pizza boxes, etc., all of which can be composted. We’re working to raise awareness of the pizza box issue, and we have met with Mr. Smith, the Director of Facilities, to make a plan for composting paper towels in the restrooms. 

Compost bins will be placed in the STEM bathrooms after Winter Break, so make sure to look for signs about what to put in them. We are following a plan that the Middle School created at the beginning of this year, and we are so excited!

Another major trash source was just clearly not trash. Who is throwing out computer cases? Gatorade bottles? Come on folks, you are smarter than that! We hope that you consider what you throw out, because you never know who might be watching 🙂

Nov 19

Composting Comes to Fourth Grade

Earlier this month, members of the Upper School Sustainability Committee came to speak to the fourth graders about the varied benefits of composting, with the intent of educating and motivating students to begin composting in the fourth grade pod.

Their presentation about the negative effects of food scraps ending up in landfills became a call to action for the students and they were eager to begin the process.

Beginning the next day, student volunteers began taking Compost Now waste bins to lunch with them so that food waste and other eligible items could be properly composted. For the last 3 weeks, the fourth graders have worked to make this part of our daily routine. 

4 foot tall Composte toteThis morning, their efforts were rewarded with a half full, large Compost Now tote, waste that otherwise would have ended up in the landfill.

As we continue to make this part of our daily routine, we hope to see the volume grow and open up conversation about expanding to other grades in the Lower School.

Nov 15

US Sustainability Committee Helps the Turkey Trot Go Green!

By Ann Leininger, DA Parents Council Sustainability Liaison

Sign directing visitors about food wasteSpecial thanks to the US Sustainability Committee who helped the Parents Association host a green event this past weekend. Students performed a waste stream analysis to determine the types of waste that would be generated during the Turkey Trot. They determined the best management method for each waste stream (compost, recycle etc) and then created signage, with re-usable white boards, so that all attendees would know how best to dispose of their waste. They debuted their new “official” tee shirts as they staged waste management areas with containers of various types and stayed on hand to monitor them and answer questions. The presence of the students and the informational signs created a great opportunity to educate all attendees while managing waste in a sustainable manner.

Sustainability Committee members sporting new tee shirts as they set up waste stations

Nov 11

T.A.M with Durham Academy Students

Frankie Stover & Ash Granda-Bondurant

“Ever since the seminar, I have paid close attention to how many trees houses have. For example, I was driving through a rural area that I was not familiar with, and I particularly noticed houses that had trees planted in the front, which made me realize how houses with trees just seemed more alive. This interpretation also told me a bit about the history of the house and maybe some of the challenges it may face. Overall, the value of trees in urban areas has increased in my mind.”

-Sanju Patel ‘23

A partnership between the Sustainability Committee and R.A.I.S.E  (Raising Awareness for Inclusion and Social Equity) leaders here at Durham Academy resulted in the successful 2021 Fall Seminar: Trees in the forest, City, and Campus. Twenty-one students across five different grade levels attended this event on Friday, November 5th. Our day was split into three parts: learning about trees in the forest with Duke Forest Director Sara Childs, learning about our trees in our urban Durham environment, and lastly focusing on planting trees around our campus. 

Continue reading

Nov 03

Everyday Stuff: Environmental Impact

By Sophie Goin ’22, Ethan Goldstein ’22, Elijah Nambo ’22, Rocco Pacchiana ’22, Thomas Pollard ’24, Ben Taylor ’22

When you buy something, do you think about the life it had before it got to you? What about what happens when you’re finished with it? Our “stuff” contributes significantly to our impact on the environment. By analyzing the life cycle of everyday objects, we can make better buying decisions and reduce our impact. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a tool for assessing the net effect of a product from creation to decomposition and/or recycling. Click on the images below to learn about the life cycle of the items. 

Life-Cycle-Analyses-Environmental-Sustainability-2021-1

Oct 15

Seminar: Trees in the Forest, City, and Campus

Friday, November 5, 8:15-3:00

Upper School and 8th Grade Students may apply

This event is offered by the Durham Academy Seminar Program, which creates opportunities for students to learn about topics of current interest that are not part of the regular curriculum. This fall the focus is on trees. Why?

  • They’re Earth’s largest, longest living organisms.
  • They reduce global warming and enhance biodiversity.
  • Their distribution can reveal social and political forces such as redlining.
  • They improve human health by filtering air and water, providing relief from summer heat, and reducing stress.

Students have been involved with trees on the DA campus since the Sustainability Committee got started in 2019. In a seminar on climate change, students got excited about the ability of trees to pull carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it in the ground. They raised money and worked with the maintenance department and the Board of Trustees Buildings and Grounds Committee, and in 2020, they planted 80 trees between the track and Pickett Rd.

students sitting under young trees
Students recording observations in the grove of trees planted by the Sustainability Committee in 2020

This fall, DA students will plant more trees as part of the November 5 seminar and a collaboration with Keep Durham Beautiful on November 13.

Continue reading

Oct 07

From Red Alert to a Greener DA

During our August back-to-school meeting for faculty, I challenged my colleagues (and myself!) to create environments and experiences that are more:

    1.  humane
    2.  sustainable, and
    3.  open to the genius of our students

I won’t dwell on the humane part here, but I do hope we are doing all we can to overcome the dehumanizing brutality of last 19 months. In many ways, the best parts of our humanity were robbed and blocked by lockdowns and masks, by fear and fatigue, by distance and screens. The pandemic too took simple pleasures away from us: things like touch. Or assemblies and concerts, CavDomes and dances. Or just being able to rub elbows with all our friends and classmates. What fun – and what a profound gift – to be fully back on campus together this year!

My second challenge is more relevant to this Living Sustainably blog. This summer’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clearer than ever the urgency of our work to give students knowledge, guidance and opportunities to engage in climate action if they have any hope of solving the planetary problems we oldsters have created.

Continue reading