The McCallum campus is expanding its environmental impact through a collective of clubs, including the Environmental Knights, the Recycling Club, the Gardening Club and even the Science National Honor Society. These clubs, established at different times by various founders, have decided to collaborate this year and set common goals. They will do this through various projects and shared meetings.
The Environmental Knights meet periodically throughout the year and have campus trash pickups every other Monday. Junior president Isadora Truan states they are going to be more involved this school year. This is Truan’s first year as president of the club, after joining her sophomore year because of her interest in promoting environmental progress and awareness. Once she observed the club’s work, she decided to step into a more active leadership role.
“I want to act as a role model for all of my peers and members so they can see what they can do,” Truan said. “I’m hoping I can motivate people to find similar joy in the environment.”
Truan is planning on achieving this through collaboration with surrounding clubs, believing that this will be a productive way of reaching out to the entire school.
“I’m really looking forward to connecting with [clubs] because they’re all really active parts of our community, and if we can all work together, I think we can have a much more efficient year to promote environmental advocacy around our school,” Truan said.
Junior president of the Gardening Club, Max Turner, has similar goals for the school year, but wants to focus on the creation of a garden. Turner founded the Gardening Club because of his own love for gardening at first, but now he is hopeful it can be a place for McCallum to grow in its sustainability.
“I’ve never really had a place that I can have a steady garden, and I’ve always dreamt of that,” Turner said.
Throughout the last year, the club has been fundraising. They have had five or six bake sales during lunch and a profit share. They have applied for a grant and are prepared to do more fundraisers this year. While the goal is to build beds and begin growing food, Turner is also hoping to establish a positive space on campus.
“We’re looking to build a community on campus that loves gardening and wants to make McCallum a greener place,” Turner said.
The Gardening Club, Environmental Knights and Recycling Club’s first project will be the creation of ecobricks. Ecobricks are a sustainable source of building material, made from recycled plastic water bottles filled with pieces of non-renewable materials. The Recycling Club, as well as members of all the other clubs, will collect the bottles and then begin filling them with trash collected across campus. Turner hopes that these bricks will contribute to the future garden’s aesthetics.
“I think it’d be really fun to have some sort of sculpture in the garden,” Turner said. “I also want to potentially get in contact with the Art Society and see if we could create ceramic tiles to put as pathways in the garden.”
Senior Willa Fischer is the president of the Recycling Club and is prepared to work with the other clubs in improving McCallum. Fischer initially joined the Recycling Club with limited knowledge, but grew to understand and see the issues with McCallum’s recycling programs.
“It made me realize how much help the recycling here needs because no one here is really properly recycling yet,” Fischer said. “I think a growth mindset is really important.”
Fischer is looking forward to working with others and having her clubs work benefit the whole school.
“We all kind of have the same common interests of saving the environment, so having a lot more group clean-ups and grabbing plastic bottles for ecobricks will be our first step in working towards that,” Fischer said.
Along with these ecobricks, the clubs have also discussed working together in the garden, sharing planting beds and having all groups plant seeds. Turner believes that this collaboration will improve the success of all the clubs.
“The more people working on the garden, the faster it gets done, and the more hands we have, the larger our impact,” Turner said. “I also think it will bring more awareness to all the clubs that will maybe gain more members.”
As the school year continues, the clubs will continue to create new goals and ideas, making McCallum a greener, more sustainable environment for all students, staff and surrounding community members.