Earth Day is Every Day at DMPS
While yesterday was Earth Day, at Des Moines Public Schools every day is proving to be an opportunity to teach and practice conservation and energy efficiency.
Yesterday was Earth Day and where better to observe and celebrate the occasion than in a school district that’s become a perennial Energy Star by proclamation of the Environmental Protection Agency?
As if the fourth consecutive EPA Partner of the Year award recently bestowed upon DMPS in recognition of last year’s exemplary achievements in energy efficiency and conservation wasn’t enough, the district’s operations department announced in its April report card that energy usage is down another 10% in the current fiscal year. Put another way, our energy bills are down more than $80,000 for the year to date. That’s job-saving besides as well as good stewardship. The building-by-building breakdown reveals that North High School and Stowe Elementary are leading the way with astounding reductions of more than 50%!
Besides the ongoing day-to-day strategies that add up to so much conservation over the course of a year a variety of special activities are going on around the district this week in honor of the occasion.
At Central Campus the award-winning Iowa Energy & Sustainability Academy (IESA) took over the student commons Wednesday for an exhibition highlighting different shades of the green movement. A steady procession of elementary schools came through to get their consciousness raised. The Downtown School sent a contingent upstairs to grab a free swag bag from Mid-American Energy and fill it up with goodies like ink pens made from recycled water bottles. There were free theme tats to be slapped on and fun displays that turned waste disposal into shooting baskets.
IESA Director Larry Beall’s two-year curriculum consists of four class sections and they’re all full. There’s also a waiting list to get in which bodes well. The IESA Recycle Crew (this year their t-shirts are bright orange because…it’s solar?) that makes the rounds of the campus every Wednesday is already collecting about five tons of paper, cardboard, plastic, aluminum cans, old cell phones and ink cartridges per year. According to one of the displays that’s the equivalent weight of three Ferraris and a full-grown male lion. How’s that for perspective?
Other displays dealt with geothermal energy, energy efficient windows, water quality, home insulation, composting and light bulbs. There were demonstrations on how to break down big cardboard boxes for recycling and turn empty toilet paper rolls into bird feeders.
For Beall and his elves Earth Day is kind of like Christmas in April.
Outside of Central Campus, students were doing a range of activities to mark Earth Day, from our Urban Leadership students taping a message about factory farms on behalf of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement to Callanan Middle School students taking to the streets, well, the sidewalks anyway, to spread the gospel of green. We’ve shared some photos and video of all of these things below.
