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St. Michael-Albertville High School

11343-50th ST. NE , Albertville, MN 55301
Kay Nowell, kayn@stma.k12.mn.us

Recycling

Energy efficiency

We started a project that recycles plastic bottles and paper products. We’ve created boxes which the school’s Environmental Club takes out once a week during study hall.

At the begining of the year we did both paper and plastic recycling, but we lobbied for the paper recycling to become part of the maintenance crew contract, and now the custodians recycle paper.

Another part of this project that has to do with recycling is to make sure that trash is not being thrown into the plastic recycling bins.

Awareness is one of our main focuses. We’ve been making signs for the bins and posters that encourage students and staff to recycle.

The overall goal of this project is to kick start recycling within our school.

Lucky Ducks

Solar power

Last year, our own first grade teacher, Aaron Heil, set up a camera that viewed a mother woodduck in her nest. The footage was broadcasted live to a link on the STMA webpage. It documented the whole process of laying eggs and raising the ducklings. The problem was that the camera ran on a marine battery that needed to be changed every 3 days. Mr. Heil was getting tired of hauling the giant batteries to and from the nesting site, so he wanted to have solar panels installed to replace the marine battery. He illicited funds from the community to buy and set up the operating system. The duck returned again this year. Now we can see the nest using solar power, and its all CARBON FREE!

We aim to power more of our school’s equipment using alternative energy.

An Art to Environment connection

Other

A new advancement to our recycling program! We are recieving new and improved bins. We were having trouble with student throwing plastic and garbage into the wrong bins, and we were lucky to recieve new bins. We are getting the art department involved by having some art students paint and decorate the bins so they really stand out!

We aim to get more students involved with greening up our school.

Solar at St. Michael Albertville

Solar power

1/22/11
This is a independent study project headed by Patrick Lindquist (a senior) as the shop manager and the Project Lead the Way class as the crew.

Our carbon cutting project has been going very well. We have the two solar panels and the battery ready to go, and we have just finished designing the rack that will be used to mount our solar panels. We will be ordering the aluminum and building the mount soon. We have spend $1,238.94 on the two Sharp 130 watt solar panels, $535.00 on the 240 amp hour AGM battery, $125.00 on the charge controller, and $475.00 on shipping for it all. I expect to pay $150.00-$200.00 on all of the aluminum we will use for the rack and another $20.00-$40.00 on materials to weigh the mounting rack down. Overall, our project has been going very well. We have been making lots of progress lately and I am very excited to continue working on it.