Since the start of the new school year, Los Altos High School’s Green Team has been making their presence known on campus with initiatives to promote eco-friendliness. An example of this is their Anything But Cars day, created to promote more eco-friendly methods of transportation. The monthly tradition — in which they hand out candy to students walking and biking to school — is one of many initiatives that the Green Team has implemented on campus since the start of the recent school year.
“Even just with our one ABC day, we’ve noticed an increase of around 28 bikers from our count,” Linnea Forslin, a senior and one of the Green Team’s co-presidents, said. “We’re hopeful that in the future, more people will find a sustainable way of coming to school.”
The monthly ABC days aren’t the Green Team’s only initiative. According to co-president Luke Byrne, the club has hosted a clothing swap drive, made progress to make the trash system on campus more convenient and collaborated with the tennis teams on campus to prevent the destruction of the tennis courts for more parking.
The Green Team has also collaborated with other schools’ green teams through the Students For Green High Schools summit conference, which facilitated the exchange of ideas to promote being green on campus.
“[SFGHS] is actually how we got the idea for the clothing swap this year,” Byrne said. “So it’s great to have this exchange of ideas.”
The Green Team’s main goal this year is to get more people involved and bring more enthusiasm about being green on campus, according to Byrne. However, despite the Green Team’s success, reestablishing the club’s presence was not easy.
“Last year, at the end of the year, [it was] just the seniors … and all the officers,” Byrne said. “[The club] was dwindling…that [was] a really big fall for us because we, historically, had 30 to 40 members.”
Despite the struggles, the Green Team has plans for the future. Along with continuing their monthly ABC days to further encourage eco-friendly transportation, future initiatives include having club members participate in beach and habitat cleanups and spread their club mission more at the upcoming holiday club fair, the co-presidents said.
“We’ve seen a steady increase in membership and the retainment of those people,” Byrne said. “There are people who do care, and we’re just trying to get people thinking about environmental things again.”
