Marlborough joined the Green Schools Alliance (GSA) at the “Climate Champion” level in 2009, and in doing so, has pledged to reduce its carbon footprint by 30 percent in the next five years and become carbon neutral by 2020.
The GSA is a coalition of more than 130,000 public and private schools across the country that are active participants in the global effort to conserve resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The “Climate Champion” level pledge asks each school to make a commitment to reduce its carbon footprint, to organize a sustainability task force representing the entire school community, to benchmark energy usage and conduct an energy audit, to initiate tangible actions to reduce emissions, and to educate the school community and monitor progress.
To that end, Marlborough is conducting an energy audit this year to target areas for energy reduction, such as paper usage in computer labs and copy machines, electricity conservation, water consumption, and waste reduction. The School’s Environmental Committee is also looking into ways to limit “vampire energy” (energy used when electronics are plugged in but not used) and possibly retrofitting classrooms in older buildings so lights turn off automatically when no one is in the room, according to Robert Bryan, Chair of the Environmental Committee and Middle School Director.
For more information about GSA, click here.
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