Julia Sobel

Scarsdale residents at the Greenburgh Nature Center

Scarsdale’s chapter of Project Green seeks to promote environmentally safe lifestyles and activities. This year they have expanded the participation and activities in their club.

On March 16 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., the club took a trip to the Greenburgh Nature Center in Scarsdale. To prepare for the event, they placed bins in the hallways for people to put their plastic water bottles. The club then cleaned those water bottles and used them as upcycled pots. The club provided soil, seeds, and water for each of the plants. There was “a lot of participation, and [they] were very happy with the result,” club co-president Isabel Block ’25 said. The Project Green Club is hoping to hold more events with the Greenburgh Nature Center in the future.

Another event that the Project Green Club hosted this year was a trip to a local composting site to better understand their processes. The club also had the opportunity to learn about the composting programs at the Scarsdale elementary schools and middle school. At these schools, each week, two students are selected as “recycling rangers,” where they stand near the bins during lunch and make sure that students put their food in the right bins—such as recycling, trash, or paper. There are also signs on the top of the bins with pictures of which foods should go in which bins.

However, SHS does not have this program in place, even though we have the oldest students in the district. Julia Sobel ’25, co-president of the club thinks that it is “really sad” we do not have this program in place, but she believes that it is congruent with the fact that students are not interested. “I think there’s generally a lot of apathy; people genuinely don’t care, and the term ‘climate change’ has lost its meaning even though people have all heard of it,” Sobel explained. Older students have “so much to focus on, and younger students seem to be more energetic about saving the planet as compared to teenagers,” Block stated. However, the Project Green Club will be meeting with the school’s administration to hopefully implement those programs.

Additionally, the school is partnered with Centergistic under a five-year contract. Centergistic is a self-funded energy conservation platform that works with smaller organizations, such as the Project Green Club at SHS, to make them a sustainable success story. The goal that the club created with Centergistic is to reduce carbon emissions and monetary spending in Scarsdale.

For the future, the club is working on an initiative to replace the plastic water bottles being sold in the cafeteria and Learning Commons with reusable ones. The club plans to sell the water bottles for around five dollars, and students can use water fountains to refill the bottles instead of constantly buying more plastic ones.

With climate change becoming an increasingly pressing issue, students like the ones involved in Project Green Club are showing that they care about our climate and are willing to work towards real solutions.