In order to help save the world, all a South student has to do is walk down the hallway to Room 360 on a Wednesday after school, where he or she will find a small group of students determined to do what they can to have a positive impact on the environment. They call their mission Project Earth.
“We demonstrate that small action can really have profound impact on the environment,” Austin Bream, the club’s co-president, said. “It doesn’t take a ton of individuals, and it doesn’t take a ton of work. It takes small groups, and it takes small efforts [. . .] to create the change.”
According to sponsor Jim Glynn, the club was started in 2007 by two students in his Chem/Phys class, then-sophomores Hannah Nelson and Young-Eun Kim.
“Originally it just started as an environmental club,” Glynn said. “They wanted to focus on […] big global issues, and initially there was interest in raising money to support those.”
However, while Glynn claimed that this form of help was perfectly acceptable, he suggested that the club needed to establish a more local focus.
“[For instance], I knew the school was trying to start a recycling program, and […] they asked us to get involved in educating the faculty and staff about it,” Glynn said.
Establishing the recycling program at South was only the first step, though. According to senior Casey Chiappetta, co-president of Project Earth, the club has undertaken multiple other projects in the community.
“We’ve cut invasive Buckthorn at the Glen, [. . .] participated in river cleanup days throughout the year, where we go to the North Branch of the Chicago River and pick up trash,” Chiappetta said. “We also have our own detention basin on Waukegan Road, and after it rains we go and we do water testing.”
It is this type of hands-on, local action that Bream appreciates most about the club.
“We’re having a daily effect on something in a way that we can see,” Bream said.
Another project the club undertook May 25 was the creation of a rain garden in downtown Glenview. The garden decreases excessive runoff from the streets, which will reduce multiple environmental problems. Project Earth is also working on raising community awareness through a series of signs they are currently making to display at the Glenview Park District.
“Glenview has done a lot of things regarding local improvements, […], and we want to make Glenview residents aware of that,” Chiappetta said. “So, the Natural Resources Commission teamed up with Project Earth, and we’re making signs that are 18×24 inches to put at the sites explaining what the Village of Glenview has done.”
In addition to projects such as these, since its second year, Project Earth has participated in an annual competition called Envirothon which tests the environmental knowledge of high school students across North America. This year’s categories included forestry, aquatics, soils, wildlife and rangelands.
Two teams of five club members participated in the Northeastern Envirothon, the Regional competition, in April. Junior Esther Jeong, who has taken part in the competition for several years, was part of Team One, which consisted of older and more experienced club members and finished first in the Regional competition, thus advancing to the State competition. Other members of her team included Bream, Chiappetta and juniors Lizzie Baetz and Eric Tomasic.
According to all involved with the club, Project Earth is an excellent way to meet new people, become more active in school as well as in the community and to help preserve the natural world for future generations. Chiappetta sums up her experiences after four years in the club.
“Whether it’s regarding planting detention basins or cutting invasive species at the Grove, I’m working to make a difference, and I think that’s one of the things that has marked my high school career in a sense,” Chiappetta said.
