Minnesota Schools Cutting Carbon

As part of our STEM Academy, all 7th and 8th grade students will team together to calculate the school’s carbon footprint, and identify ways to reduce the school’s carbon footprint. We propose to use the $500 to offset as much of our remaining carbon output in an effort to become carbon neutral.

While we are doing this at the school level, we will also have students research their carbon footprint on an individual level. Students will complete a daily log of activities that use electricity (showering, watching tv, rides to and from school, etc), as well as the amount of time spent on activities during one week in order to gather data. Students will select 2 or 3 areas (travel, electrical use at home) to reduce their carbon footprint. They will create a written action plan detailing how they will reduce, what affect it will have, what barriers they might face, and possible solutions to these barriers.

Following our research students will share their research with the school board and local community. Success in this endeavor has the potential to lead to a larger scale project the following year.