In recent years, climate change has become a rising concern to living things on Earth. Climate change has shown to have many adverse effects on the prosperity of our planet, as well as possibly affecting future generations. Learning how to minimize our impact on the planet now could save future generations.

How can staff and students at Air Academy High School do their part to eliminate these effects in the next few years? We can all start by doing our part of carpooling, making more of an effort to recycle, or eliminating disposable lunch trays. 

Many different studies and reports have shown that our planet has rapidly increased in temperature, which could lead to the endangerment of many different species and ecosystems. Scientists are saying that if we do not do our part, these dangerous effects may be permanent

“This is the only planet we get, we can’t change it. Everyone needs to breathe oxygen, we eat from the ground, everything comes from the Earth,” junior Anna Campbell shared.  

A sustainable way we can encourage students at AAHS to become more aware of their environmental footprint is by including more hands-on activities relating to the environment. 

“I’m all for hands-on projects, that’s kind of one of the reasons we brought in our art integrated classes here at air academy several years ago,” principal, Mr. Daniel Olson, mentioned when asked if we could integrate more engaging projects in our curriculum.

“Hands-on learning is proven to be more effective at helping students grasp what they’re taught,” Social media specialist Jonathan Arnholz stated.“There’s no shortage of studies that show hands-on learning has a significant impact.” 

Hands-on activities paired with action-packed learning about the environment could be the perfect fix.

 “A number of the studies showed that environmental education increased civic engagement and positive environmental behaviors,” researchers at the benefit shared in an article titled, “K-12 Lunch Environments.” 

Another small thing we can do to lessen the negative effects on the environment at AAHS is to become more aware of recycling. Not every classroom in AAHS has an easy and accessible recycling bin available to students and many students do not use or acknowledge them. 

“Last year we actually did have a goal to get a recycling bin in every classroom, unfortunately, that did not happen but we’re still gonna work on doing that this year,” junior Erin Bailey shared when asked about the activities done in the environmental club here at AAHS.

What’s something we could do as a school to better the environment? 

Many students have noticed large amounts of waste that comes from the disposable trays we use in the cafeteria, switching to reusable trays would be a great way for our school to become more eco-friendly. 

“Reusable compartment trays had a lower environmental impact and were less expensive when compared to disposable servingware options,” writer Amelia Levin wrote in her article titled “Reusables vs. Disposables in Foodservice Operations.” 

Switching from disposable to reusable might just be the way to go in terms of the future of our school. 

Though there are many ways we can help eliminate the worsening effects on our planet, what’s important is that we do our best to think more about how the little things can have big effects.