Community

MLK Jr. Magnet High students Bethel Derege and Grace Olson rehabilitated a rain garden at their school by planting new perennials and creating an environmental club. The club’s focus is to maintain the rain garden. The pair of two students received a second grant for another project, which introduced a TerraCycle recycling bin for teachers to discard classroom materials into.

“My favorite part of the project was seeing so many volunteers come outside spur of the moment to serve their school,” Olson said. “Some of them had no experience planting but were not scared to try it out. It really helped pull together a community at our school that values the environment very highly.”

Rising Antioch High School senior Marko Doce and his classmates restored their school’s greenhouse after it had been abandoned, neglected, and damaged by storms and wind for many years. Cleaning up the greenhouse and the surrounding gardens allowed the group to plant seeds and order parts for future use. Doce and his peers are hoping to create an environment and community at their school that “focuses on sustainability and fresh produce” for the Antioch area.

“I think our favorite part of the entire project was looking back and seeing all of the work we’d done through photos and the contents of the greenhouse/garden,” Doce said.“Sustainability is crucial in a community like Nashville, this is because as a growing city, we must work to protect the areas that we live in through means that won’t hurt us in the future.”

Hume Fogg students Sarah Wang, Malik Alabed, and Arabella Vos placed Pens, Pencils, and Markers Zero Waste Boxes and a Battery Bucket from the Cumberland River Compact throughout their school. Students and faculty collected pens, pencils, markers and batteries to place in the boxes and buckets to reduce waste. The trio also coordinated with school staff to brainstorm and implement the project.

“We hope that the success of our project influences other schools to also implement TerraCycle boxes, and that these combined initiatives put a dent in the amount of waste being thrown out in the US- as the US is the country that produces the most waste despite being only the fourth largest in the world,” Wang said.