“Green schools” is the new buzz term in the education community.

School boards are being urged to “go green”, to reflect student concerns in the building, maintenance and day-to-day operations of facilities.

A large part of this effort comes from the students themselves. Each year, the Simcoe County District School Board celebrates the efforts of student and teacher environmentalists. Green teams who organize recycling programs, young students who start a composting system, teachers who teach green living habits, are the frontlines of the green schools effort.

The school board is striving to be, in the words of the board’s environmental systems manager Kayla Secord, “as efficient and environmentally aware as we can.”

This Friday, the public school board will be hosting its own Earth Hour to reflect the international efforts of towns and other corporations. For an hour on Friday afternoon, the board’s schools and administration buildings will turn off their lights and reduce their power consumption to “take action by reducing energy consumption while spreading the message of conservation.”

The Earth Hour movement began last year in Australia and is spreading across the world with communities signing up and taking a stand for green living.

The efforts the board is taking to reduce waste, conserve energy and form environmentally conscious students are worthwhile and inspirational. It is fitting that schools instruct students on how to combat global climate change.

The warnings of scientists are a call to action, especially for my generation; we are the ones who will have to live with the deleterious affects of climate change. Our schools taking efforts to combat the menace today is a way to frame our futures in a positive way: we need the centres of our education to support our future both through learning itself and through responsible stewardship of the planet.

The board recognises this responsibility and is embracing the imperative of environmental leadership. For instance, the average school is now diverting over 30 per cent of its waste into recycling efforts and the numbers are constantly being improved. The SCDSB also registered 11 schools in the sustainable schools program to allow monitoring of our efforts.

The board has also built a LEEDs-certified school and is encouraging its facility services to use eco-friendly cleaning supplies.

Perhaps most significantly, the board created an environmental incentive program to reward students and staff who go green. The program works to create, train and encourage Green Teams in each school. These groups of students come together to plan Earth Week activities, organize recycling and waste-reduction strategies and educate their peers about green living.

By encouraging, enabling and empowering students to become green stewards, we can ensure that the future is prepared to overcome the challenges of climate change. Green schools are a double blessing: eco-friendly infrastructure reduces our contribution to greenhouse gases and eco-education teaches the future generations how to live in a more earth-friendly world.

Green schools are education and action hand in hand to support the future of this planet.

• Jonathan Scott is a student trustee with the Simcoe County District School Board. E-mail jscott@scdsb.on.ca.