Harriton Environmental Club is the place for all things green. Headed by Amélie Lemay, Maria Wang, Emily Mooney and Lorraine Ruppert, Environmental Club takes pride in “thinking globally and acting locally.”

This club meets regularly with their 30+ members and sponsor, Mr. Ferraro, who teaches AP Environmental Science and Landscape Architecture/Horticulture. The Banner spoke to the club leaders to learn about some of their upcoming projects.

The leaders were excited to introduce a plant wall to Harriton. The wall will be located outside the foods room and plants including basil and parsley will be used for cooking in the Foods and Nutrition classes with Ms. Binkley. The project will help add to our school’s reputation as sustainable and eco-conscious.

However, the club is disappointed as they “can’t use the herbs in the Harriton kitchen because of rules about where the cafeteria food can come from.”

Another project they plan on continuing in Harriton’s own composting pile which is located by the staff parking lot and sports stadium. Club members sign up to take food scraps from the cafeteria to contribute to the compost pile.

In addition, it is also the club’s responsibility to maintain the Harriton gardens, greenhouse, and aquaponic tank, all of which started as Environmental Club projects.

In terms of publicity, the club is excited to have a booth at NarbEarth day, and offer a project for day of service at Harriton. In addition, they’re excited to announce that they are “working with a Harriton junior named Beau to organize a project where the club members will tend to Philadelphia rain gardens.”

Yet another project that Environmental club is looking into is the recycling process at Harriton. Why does it need fixing? Harriton does not recycle nearly as much as it should. The system, blue bins for paper and yellow for non-paper recyclables, usually is followed.

So what is the issue? Well, when students put a piece of trash in a bin full of recycling, the whole bag is wasted and taken to a dump. There isn’t much anyone can do to fix this. It would cost a lot of money for the district to pay workers to diligently look through recycling every day, so the problem has to be fixed by the Harriton community members.

Environmental club is aiding the process by hanging up posters above many of the larger cans throughout the school, with images depicting what to throw in the trash and recycling.

“There are plenty of ways to get involved with Enviro Club, big or small! Email us at [email protected] to sign up for our emails.” -Harriton Environmental Club