Northern Burlington County Regional High School student group celebrates the natural environment and increases awareness of the dangers posed to it.
By: William Wichert
Scientists may study the problems and government officials may work to correct them, but if someone asks freshman Cassie Trendell of Northern Burlington County Regional High School, she’ll tell them that she’s the one holding the cards when it comes to protecting the environment.
"It isn’t out of your control at all," Cassie said. "The power of speech is a powerful thing."
Cassie and her fellow members of the Students for Earth’s Recovery Everywhere (SFERE) group at the school are demonstrating that power this week as part of the 35th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, the annual drive to celebrate the natural environment and increase awareness of the dangers posed to it.
Watching the SFERE students rush around a classroom last week in preparation of their Earth Day activities, creating posters and organizing T-shirts, one got the sense that the environmental movement of the 1970s has changed, but it has not died.
There may not be marches in the streets or public outcries over the failed attempts of federal legislators to protect the environment, but the sentiment is still the same and the goals have not changed. Earth Day is about getting people to care and, then, to act.
In spite of studies that show a decline in public attention to environmental protection, several local groups like SFERE continue working to show people the realities of air and water pollution as well as the effects of development in the overcrowded Garden State.
"It’s civic responsibility for your world and your people," said Peggy Apice, a family consumer science teacher at the high school and one of the supervisors of SFERE. "I think we need to instill in the kids the impact if nothing is done."
How It All Began
This civic-minded approach to the environment within SFERE is exactly what drove over 20 million people to participate in the first Earth Day event on April 22, 1970.
In Jack Lewis’ "The Spirit of the First Earth Day" from the January/February 1990 issue of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Journal, he wrote how the rallies and speeches of Earth Day were a culmination of the environmental problems of the late 1960s.
Air pollution was making life in big cities unbearable, and the danger of pesticides was immortalized in Rachel Carson’s 1962 "Silent Spring." Fish were dying in large numbers throughout the Great Lakes of Michigan, and the toxic chemicals in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.
But aside from addressing the obvious environmental hazards left by years of heavy industrialization, the organizers of the first Earth Day also saw the event as a way of "building democracy and citizen participation," said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network in Washington, D.C., an environmental advocacy group founded by the day’s first organizers.
When Ms. Rogers tries to sum up the phenomenon of the original event, she recalls a photo she saw of 1 million people standing on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Dressed in business suits, these folks are proof that Earth Day was a middle-class endeavor and not just a student-led protest, she said.
"The environmental movement that grew out of thatthe catalyst was Earth Day," said Ms. Rogers. "If it was just a college, it doesn’t explain why Congress freaked out."
In the decade to follow, the environmental movement led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in Dec. 1970, and then to creation of a dozen key environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
"The word ‘environment’ came into widespread use only at the end of the decade (1960s)," wrote Mr. Lewis. "By then, committed activists understood that urban environments would be the battlefield for years to come, but they wanted the American public and American political leaders to understand that as well."
Declining Attitudes
Since the earliest Earth Day events of the 1970s, however, some studies suggest that public attention to environmental causes has dwindled as other political issues gain more prominence on the national stage.
The most recent decline in public attitudes toward environmental protection is due to American involvement in the Iraq war and the fear of terrorism, said Michael Greenberg, Ph.D., a professor in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, who has analyzed environmental surveys over several years.
"Because of war, terrorism, and the slowdown of the economy, public concern over environmental protection has shifted toward those other areas," said Dr. Greenberg in a recent phone interview. "It’s not that they don’t care about (the environment). It’s that the fervor is gone."
In "Is Public Support for Environmental Protection Decreasing? An Analysis of U.S. and New Jersey Data" from the February 2004 edition of "Environmental Health Perspectives," Dr. Greenberg argued that declines in environmental support have come at times of economic distress.
When the unemployment rate was about 8 percent, polls taken in February 1984 showed that only 49 percent of the respondents listed the environment as a priority over the economy, according to Dr. Greenberg’s article.
The same pattern can be found following the recent economic downturn. Although 66 percent of survey respondents in 1999 chose the environment over the economy, that figure slipped to 47 percent in 2003, according to the article.
Ten years after the first Earth Day, this apparent decline in environmental attitudes had already become an issue, but Sen. Gaylord Nelson, one of the first organizers of the event, didn’t buy it.
In "Earth Day ’70: What It Meant" from the April 1980 EPA Journal, Sen. Nelson wrote, "Those who write that view are uninformed and far removed from the environmental scene or the politics surrounding it. In fact, the politics of environmentalism are so pervasive, from the grass roots to the national capital, that it is hard to believe even the most casual observer could miss it."
‘Making the
Connection’
Sen. Nelson may not have known the people of northern Burlington County, but his sentiments could easily represent the environmental activism being promoted within local communities and schools.
The biggest step in any activist’s struggle is awareness: getting students and residents to understand the consequences of their actions and inattention to environmental protection.
For SFERE at Northern Burlington County Regional High School, the focal point of the group’s efforts over the last few years has been the simple act of recycling, which many other students do not naturally practice.
"It’s like pulling teeth to get them to do something," said Parvaneh Sulon, an Earth science teacher at the school and a SFERE supervisor. "They don’t know what a landfill looks like."
As Ms. Sulon explained every teacher’s struggle to get his or her students to care about a given subject and relate it to their own lives, she kept coming back to the same few words: "It’s just a matter of making the connection."
Senior Sangnya Thaker said she believes SFERE has been successful in making that connection through posters and other outreach efforts. "Every little bit counts," she said. "It gives more awareness to the students."
But Ms. Apice said she hopes to expand SFERE’s work beyond recycling and move the group toward greater environmental awareness. Her first goal is to involve the students in the work of another local activist organization: the Crafts Creek Springhill Brook Watershed Association.
Bob Tallon, one of the organization’s founders, said SFERE is the first school group to show interest in working with the watershed association, which plans on monitoring the health of local streams and conducting educational programs to inform people about the dangers posed to local waterways.
The association, which includes residents from Mansfield Township, Florence Township, and the Bordentown area, will report to the state Department of Environmental Protection and local municipal officials to share their findings about the quality of the streams.
"It’s just to make people aware of the things they do," said Mr. Tallon. "We’re not a punitive organization. We’re not out to get people in trouble."
SFERE students would help watershed members with placing native plants throughout local streams to prevent erosion and help protect the endangered species living around the area.
"The watershed association is more of a link between the community and schools all together," said Mr. Tallon. "I think it’s part of the whole (environmental) movement. It’s all tied together."

