Over 20 participants from 11 schools attended the PAISBOA Sustainability meeting at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy on October 27, 2022. The theme for the evening: “Getting Back to Where We Were Before Covid” related to environmental sustainability.
SCH Academy’s playground made with natural materials
SCH’s new Head of School, Dr. Delvin Dinkins, welcomed the group and noted SCH’s commitment to environmental sustainability. Over the years, SCH has received recognition for its “green” initiatives such as the Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Award and National Wildlife’s Eco School Certifications as a Green Flag School. Upper School Science Teacher and Sustainability Coordinator, Ellen Kruger, led the group on an informative tour outside and inside the campus.
SCH student showing the teachers around the greenhouse
Key highlights of the tour featured:
Lower school outdoor classroom,
Play area with natural materials,
Rain garden installation by environmental artist Stacy Levy,
Greenhouse championed by a student
Pond and garden for lower school students.
Participants feasted on a delicious plant-based dinner created by CulinArt’s Chef Nicole that included grilled fall vegetables topped off with homemade chocolate chip brownies.
Guest speaker, Maurice Q. Jones, General Manager of Philadelphia’s PAR Recycle Works, shared how schools can donate electronics (or e-waste) such as laptops, monitors, cell phones, and other devices.
Maurice Q. Jones presenting for PAR Recycle Works
PAR provides transitional employment to people returning from prison by training employees to collect, sort, and deconstruct e-waste. PAR’s diversion and recycling of e-waste has had a meaningful impact on the environment. Cell phones, for example, contain precious metals like gold, silver, copper, platinum, and palladium. The extraction of natural resources requires copious amounts of energy. Since its inception, PAR has diverted over 1 million pounds of e-waste from landfills.
PAR has collected e-waste from area schools including Penn Charter, Germantown Friends, Moorestown Friends, Villanova University, among others.
Moorestown Friends’ teacher, Pauline Williams noted: "We used PAR for our e-waste collection and it was a great experience. Maurice was very helpful and we were grateful to find a way to prevent our old electronics from adding to the landfills."
Penn Charter’s teacher Tom Rickards added: "PAR is great to work with and there is always a steady stream of electronic waste that needs to be handled at my school. Maurice is responsive and allows us to support the double goods of properly recycling the e-waste while also providing financial support for the good people at PAR."
The fall foliage was the perfect backdrop to kick off this year’s PAISBOA Sustainability meeting. Our upcoming PAISBOA Sustainability meetings will be at Haverford College on February 23 and at Overbrook School for the Blind on April 26th.
For more information and to be added to the PAISBOA Sustainability Group Listserv, please contact PAISBOA’s Ron Hill at rhill@paisboa.org.
Article by Jessica Korgen, Sustainability Intern at Boyer Sudduth Environmental Consultants. Jess is a student at Haverford College with a major in Environmental Studies.
Article printed in PAISBOA’s Friday Flyer, Vol XI, No. 16 - November 4, 2022.
