Club Spotlight: Climate Council 

Written by: Caleb Crawford and Jessie McDonald

For this month's publication, journalists at The Edge decided to do an “Environmental Takeover Issue.” This is why you will see various feature articles about the envrionment throughout our site. For this article, we interviewed one of the executive members of the KCI Climate Council, a club that always spotlights the environment, in order to understand how our own local ONE KCI community is tackling the climate crisis.  

In our research, we interviewed Climate Council executive Lilah Castle for an overview of what Climate Council is, what they do, and some of their past initiatives. 

The first thing we learned about the Climate Council is about the name itself. Lilah explained that they prefer to use the word council instead of club as “they all work together to collaborate and plan.” Climate Council advocates for issues relating to climate change, the environment and other similar challenges.

The Council meets once a week to brainstorm and plan future initiatives.  They also strive to allow for discussion relating to recent climate news. Lilah mentioned that last year the Council was able to invite in guest speakers with the notable highlight of local Green Party MP Mike Morrice. The Climate Council was able to “learn more about the political aspect of things,” which Lilah thought was a fantastic learning opportunity. 

When speaking about some of the past Climate Council initiatives, Lilah highlighted the recent “Tea Day.” Students were able to bring in a reusable water bottle or mug, and hot chocolate and tea was provided. The goal of the event was to encourage the use of reusable water bottles and reduce the use of single-use plastic at KCI. 

The main recent event that Climate Council arranged was the school-wide hit of Thrift Day. This was the second KCI Thrift Day, and after last year's success, Climate Council was super excited for this year’s. Students had the opportunity to donate gently used clothing during the weeks leading up to the event. During Thrift Day itself, tons of used and vintage clothes were available at affordable prices for all KCI students.

When asked if she had any messages for the ONEKCI community, Lilah wanted to share that she believes “we can work on really getting out there and getting our voices heard.” She advocates for us as KCI students to make simple small changes to positively impact our climate. She personally uses shampoo bars instead of bottles to cut back on single use plastics, a small change others could do as well!

The Edge encourages any of our readers who are interested to join Climate Council. Lilah stated that “new members are always welcome.” Anyone interested can check out the Climate Council Instagram @kci_climate_council or the Google Classroom with the code psmcp4b. Let's make a difference!