2.1: Water Conservation/ Pollution Prevention

Return to Objective 2: Student-driven Sustainability Practices

Students and their advisory groups innate litter pick ups of our campus on a periodic basis. This beautifies the campus and prevents litter from getting into the sewer systems and harbor. Litter pick ups organized by older students provide opportunities for educating younger grades.

Pictures above show a litter pick up from June 4, 2021. This was organized by an 8th grade student and advertised to all students at Community Meetings and using the Commodore Instagram and Facebook. Seven 7th and 8th grade students participated in this litter pick up.

In February 2022, a 7th grade advisory of 14 students carries out their bi-weekly litter clean up. This week they're working on the parking lot and wall area that gets a lot of litter especially after a big rainstorm.

In December of 2019, six 8th grade students and Green Team members traveled to Annapolis to participate in the Bag Ban Rally. They were advocating for the state to ban single-use bags in order to reduce plastic pollution and waste. Students were particularly passionate describing the plastic bags seen in sewers during litter pick ups and floating in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Fourteen 8th grade students followed up this action in January of 2022 by making no-sew reusable bags. They recycled old uniform shirts and t-shirts that had long been abandoned in the lost and found into something useful. Some student took their bags home to use while other donated them to the food pantry.

Commodore's School Property borders several rain garden "bump outs" that two advisory group help to maintain. Students remove litter from these gardens and work with neighborhood volunteers to help remove weeds and maintain proper plant growth. Below are pictures of a 7th grade boys advisory with 16 students and a 8th grade boys advisory of 14 students cleaning litter from the rain gardens in February of 2022. You can see in the first picture that because of their proximity right in the middle of the crosswalks, they tend to get filled with litter.