What is Green Schools Nova Scotia?
The goal of the program is to promote a culture of sustainability in the school setting.
Green Schools NS staff help your environmental club to understand the sustainability planning process, including helping you to create a long term vision, from which you can develop achievable goals over time. We can act as consultants, to help connect you with the right resources and tools, and we can help you to profile the achievements of your environmental club, your school and your school community to wider audiences.
Green Schools NS is intended to be a long-term initiative that will share successes and best practices here on the Green Schools NS website. Students are at the core of the Green Schools NS program, and your ideas and involvement will steer the direction of the program at your school.
Green Schools Nova Scotia staff work with environmental clubs, teachers, principals and staff to identify what you are already doing well at your school, and other things you might want to improve on.
Specifically, we work to help you encourage:
- Reduced energy and water use
- Less waste and litter
- Decreased vehicle idling and increased carpooling, cycling, and walking to school
- More time spent time outside, making your school grounds into more natural and enjoyable places
- Purchasing and learning about local foods, and growing your own food, if possible
- Learning about environmental, social, and global issues, and what you can do to improve sustainability in your school, and your community
- Developing leadership and teamwork skills, and the confidence to create the change you want to see in the world.
When one tugs at a single thing in nature,
he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ~John Muir
What is sustainability?
The word Sustainability literally means ‘to survive over time, or endure’. It basically means that there are limits to nature, and that we can only take and use so much without causing permanent harm or change.
Learn more →
What is a “Green School?”
Imagine that your school produces very little waste, and everyone makes sure to recycle properly.
Imagine that few people are driven to school, and no vehicles sit and idle in the parking lot.
Maybe you have classes outside on occasion, and your school is noticed for how beautiful and natural the grounds are.
Imagine that your cafeteria serves food you grow at school, or it comes from local farms and producers.
Picture your whole school working together to reduce energy use, and being able to use the money saved for other purposes. And what if some (or all!) of the energy you use is generated by solar panels or a wind turbine on the roof!?
Envision being proud of going to a school where your Principal and teachers are environmental champions, and you are learning to be one.
You are imagining your school as a Green School.