GREEN Environmental consciences are flourishing on the outskirts of a movement BY JENNINGS FELT AND SAHANA ARUMANI
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he Global Week for Future revealed the storm of clarity behind the haze of the climate crisis as 7.6 million people from across the globe protested to the soundtrack of Generation Z’s rallying cries. One advocate of climate activism within the growing global movement is junior Ellery White. She is the founder of the Save Our Oceans club and her mission is to broaden peoples’ viewpoints with the power of pure fact. This goal stemmed from White’s innate interest in marine biology and how the climate directly affects the oceans. However, she was also partially motivated by the lack of awareness in the school and surrounding community. “I know a lot of people at the school don’t believe in climate change and don’t really help out around the community, so I wanted to create something where students could come in, I can bring awareness and where people could raise money and all that stuff,” White said. For a mere thirty minutes every three weeks, White has the opportunity to show her club videos, introduce them to relevant facts and formulate service projects. The present purpose of the club, White emphasizes, is about highlighting the actions of current student activists, namely sixteen-year-
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old Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg, and the growing amount of media surrounding the issue, in order to create a case for action. “I showed one of her videos in my club and I think people really took it and everyone was really quiet and just sat there and watched what she was saying,” White said. White hopes to expand the scope of her club by partnering with businesses such as 4ocean and fellow activists that she met during a sea turtle conservation initiative in Costa Rica. “I have a friend in Costa Rica who sells these kits, like metal straws and reusable kitchenware that I’m hoping to sell,” she said. “I also partnered with the 4oceans bracelets that I’m hoping to sell.” A similar gesture is being extended by senior Page Costello in her efforts to bring the conversation of electronic waste to the table. She and her partner, senior Ashlee Hall, are three weeks into their initiative of programming a new and edited picture of e-waste into the student body’s perception. “It’s kind of underrecognized. A lot of people will just kind of throw their stuff out and they’re like ‘It’ll go into the landfill and it’ll be ok,” Costello says. “But in reality, it’s not ok.” Despite being a young effort, it is
already reaching out to the Sterlingbased company Secure Electronics in order to organize drives that will accept a myriad of tired technologies. “E-waste isn’t just computers and TVs and phones. It’s also cords, and we will be taking that at our drive,” Costello said. In addition to donation drives, Costello and Hall want to illuminate the toxic footprint e-waste leaves in its wake. “Stuff leaks into the ground, it causes terrible issues, it ruins the soil,” Costello said. “A lot of the stuff tends to go to underdeveloped countries. The batteries have terrible acids in them that could end up poisoning the water and in all of these impoverished countries the kids are getting really sick.” This mission began when Costello heard a student Ted Talk on the topic of e-waste last year. The barrage of information about the environmental impacts coupled with a painfully explicit image opened both her eyes and mind. “He was showing pictures of ‘computer mountain’ or something, and it was in a country in Africa and it was just this pile of old electronics,” she said. “It was like a mountain of all this stuff and the whole area around it was just so dead.”
