Vision

We decided in our Clothing 1101 class this year to take part in the Clothing 4 Climate initiative that was created by Let’s Talk Science. We decided after doing the lessons in this unit that we would try our best to make our school more eco-friendly in several different ways, including doing our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by the clothing cycle, reducing the amount of emissions created by vehicles, and to plant trees on the school property to act as carbon sinks.

Action

To reduce emissions caused by the clothing cycle, our class broke into groups and completed different initiatives which have been extremely successful at our school. One group began a “clothing swap” biweekly, in which students in our school as well as teachers were asked to bring in items of clothing that are high quality but just aren’t suitable for them anymore. This group has hosted two clothing swaps now, with every student in the school taking home an item or two of clothing in a “leave one, take one” type manner. This has went over so well at JMOC – it is incredible to see the excitement of students as they not only bring in items, but leave with items they love. We cut a hole in the wall of our cafeteria and created a “chute” for people to drop clothing off; the chute leads into a little room that isn’t in use. The group then organizes the clothing into sizes and gets it ready for display at our next clothing swap.
Another group created an area in our book room for students, staff, and the public to come drop off clothing for donations. The students are responsible when their bin fills up to take the clothing out and get it transported to the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Gander. This has also been very successful. Our school’s Cricut machine was used to make their display fancy to draw more attention to it!
Another group created an initiative in which people can drop off/bring in clothing that isn’t suitable for donation. They then cut the materials up into cloths to bring to local mechanics to be used as “rags”.
Another group decided to create a removable outdoor clothesline so that whenever we needed to use the washing machine at school, we could set up the clothesline on two hooks that are screwed into the school and dry our clothing outside. This has already been used several times by students and staff!
Other groups have decided to make purses, wallets, bags, etc out of clothing they no longer want. We bought buttons and other materials to help them with this.
We also decided to build a bike rack for our school to cut down on the amount of people who are getting dropped off at school daily. Many students are taking advantage of this and riding bike whenever the weather permits!
We have purchased trees to be planted today (May 25th) to act as carbon sinks on our school property, helping to reduce the harmful effects of greenhouse gases. We learned from Lets Talk Science that trees are one of the most effective carbon sinks!
We also purchased some eco-friendly laundry care products and cleaning products for our school, as well as LED lights for our student lounge, as we learned that LED lights are much less harmful to the environment.
Each group took pictures and made commercials for their initiatives, which will be shared with this application.
We are very proud of our work this year!

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