By Dana Bernstein, Special to the Packet
Students from 17 local elementary, middle and high schools gathered together on Saturday, Feb. 11, at the Princeton Public Library for a “Next Generation Environmental Fair.”
Students displayed and presented on the “green” initiatives their schools have implemented, with the goal of both learning from one another and educating the public. The event was co-sponsored by the library and Princeton Day School’s EnAct (Environmental Action) club.
”It’s definitely important to keep the environment clean. Every little step helps, and the little things you do as a school should spread around,” said Aznive Aghababion, 16, of Hopewell Valley Central High School.Both she and Natalia Ochalski, 17, are members of the recycling club at Hopewell. The club meets twice a week to collect recyclables throughout the school.
”We have a bottle bin and a paper bin in each hallway. We collect them, so they can be properly disposed of,” Ochalski explained. The school also has a compost club and a gardening club.Minimizing energy consumption is also a priority for many schools.
Princeton High School has reduced its energy from 60,000 kilowatt-hours a week to less than 50,000 according to Ian Mertz, 17. This is a result of three changes.
First is that the school now keeps the lights in the auditorium off for a longer portion of the day. Second, the school replaced all the incandescent light bulbs in the weight room with fluorescent bulbs that are motion-sensitive. Third, a majority of the hallway lights remain off during the day.
”For almost all of the hallways in our major areas, there are clusters of five lights, and we are leaving only the middle light on. So four-fifths of the lights are off. That’s a pretty nominal savings,” Mertz said.
At Stuart Country Day School, Camila Tellez, 14, heads the Fair Trade Princeton campaign. Fair Trade allows workers around the world to receive fair compensation for their work. Its products, which include coffee, bananas, chocolate and sugar, among others, are marked with a Fair Trade seal.
Tellez is working to render Stuart a Fair Trade school, which should occur within the next few months.
”We’d be one of the first K-12 schools that is Fair Trade, which means that things in the school store and the cafeteria are Fair Trade,” she said.
She is also spreading awareness among the community and reaching out to retailers.
”We put stickers on the walls and windows and try to distribute materials to the retailers,” she said.
Some schools are also focusing on the environment inside the classroom.
Princeton Friends School has its own greenhouse in which students “sometimes go for science,” according to Micah Patt, 12. She is also enrolled in an arts elective where students turn “junk” materials into art.
”There’s just all this stuff, and you can do whatever you want with it. It’s really fun,” she said.
For one project, Patt selected a piece of cardboard, which she painted.
”Then I got a thing of dried paint, and then I cut it into the shape of a heart and put it on the cardboard. Then I got a can, and I put it on [the cardboard],” Patt explained. “I’m going to hang it on my room door, so people can leave me messages.”
At the Pennington School, students can participate in an eight-week long fashion design class where they make clothing out of recycled materials. Girls make dresses, and boys make suits.
”You feel good about yourself because you get to do something fun and help the environment,” said Marjorie Long, 12.
Bella Lorio, 12, made a dress out of pedicure flip-flops. At the conclusion of the class, there was a fashion show complete with a catwalk during which students showed off their garments.
”I liked how they had a class where they made dresses out of junk. That seemed really cool,” said Patt, who visited the Pennington School’s booth during the fair.
Other schools are taking advantage of the digital world to promote sustainability. The fifth graders at Stuart Country Day School in Princeton have created a blog for their environmental club, which tracks “all of our progress and any upcoming news,” according to Rebekah Ten Hagen, 10.
The club is divided into groups, which include the compost, nature trail and sustainability groups.
”For compost, we’re about to get 1,000 worms, and we’re going to use the [compost] to fertilize all of our gardens,” she said.
”It is just one of many, many brilliant things that [Princeton Day School Sustainability Coordinator] Liz Cutler has produced in this town. I could see the kids’ excitement,” said Dorothy Mullen, garden educator for Riverside School in Princeton.

