OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (OneWorld) - The millions of children and thousands of school buildings about to start a new cycle of learning would both benefit from some serious greening, says the Earth Day Network (EDN), offering suggestions from turning off light switches to adding solar panels.

Bryan Adams High School in Dallas, Texas, USA. © Dean Terry (flickr) "The back-to-school season is a perfect opportunity to begin or continue greening efforts at your school. Whether public or private, large or small, school greening efforts offer educational, environmental, and economic benefits for the whole school and community," says Earth Day Network Director of Education Sean Miller.

EDN has demonstrated that by adding just 2 percent to building costs, a "green" school can be constructed. Among the savings are 585,000 pounds of carbon dioxide reduction and lower energy costs.

These energy savings, they calculate in a study entitled "Greening America's Schools: Costs and Benefits," are sufficient to allow a school to hire two more teachers.

Green initiatives at schools, moreover, were shown in the 2006 report to have a positive impact on student performance and teacher retention rates.

Children, parents, and teachers can contribute toward a greener school by making sure electronics are unplugged when not in use, keeping doors closed during winter months, discouraging the idling of buses in front of schools, and packing re-usable lunches with little to nothing to be thrown away.

EDN also encourages parents to work with schools to perform energy audits that point to potential changes, such as switching from electric to LED lights for Exit signs, providing reusable utensils in cafeterias, organizing recycling programs, or exploring the possibility of installing a green roof, which can help regulate building temperature and contribute to energy savings.

The Washington, DC-based environmental group, launched at the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, also offers materials for its network of 25,000 teachers, helping them integrate environmental learning into the curriculum, including games and hands-on activities.

One suggested class project, for example, is to measure how much junk mail the school receives, and contact companies to remove the school from their mailing lists. Then measure again and estimate how much paper is being saved.

Getting down and dirty with nature is particularly important to environmental learning and counteracting NDD, or Nature Deficit Disorder, characterized by the vast amount of time spent indoors by Americans and identified in the increasingly popular book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv.

In response, EDN and others are advocating for passage of the No Child Left Indoors Act, to ensure that throughout their school experience children can interact with nature, and thus learn to respect, value, and conserve it.

The Act would ensure that environmental education becomes a formal part of the standard curriculum and that teachers have the resources required to teach it.

EDN's "Green Schools Campaign" has an ambitious goal: to "green" all of the elementary, middle, and secondary schools in the United States within a generation.