Booker High Celebrates Earth Week

 To mark the 42^nd anniversary of the original Earth Day — April 22, 1970 — students and staff at will celebrate with Earth Week 2012, an in-school festival of activities Wednesday through Friday (April 25-27) designed to remind students to be stewards of the environment.

The Key Club is sponsoring the event, in collaboration with Community Youth Development. Key Club faculty sponsor Ashley Harris said that she hopes the week serves as a reminder to students to take personal responsibility for the protection of our planet.

“We came up with these activities as a creative way that would impact the most people,” Harris said. “I hope students at least come away with a renewed realization that they should treat our campus and the larger environment with respect.”

The celebration will kick off on Wednesday with a demonstration of rain barrels, which allow for rainwater reclamation to help conserve water and reduce storm run-off. A representative of Sarasota Rain Barrels will be on campus to show students how these water collection devices can be used just about anywhere.

On Thursday the educational fun continues with a “Recycling Relay Race” sponsored by the city of Sarasota’s Solid Waste Collection and Recycling Department. Disposable items, ranging from used batteries to pizza boxes, will be strewn on the ground; students will sort through them to separate recyclable items from trash and then organize the recyclables.

Events culminate on Friday with a demonstration of Toyota’s eco-friendly vehicles, which will allow students to see how alternative energies can help preserve the atmosphere by reducing greenhouse gases.

Representatives from Willis-Smith Construction are also scheduled to be on-site to answer questions about “green” building and its benefits. The company, which is the primary contractor for the new Booker High School campus, uses innovations in its construction, such as lights that turn on and off automatically when sensors detect people entering or leaving a room.

Also on campus on Friday will be a student representative from Florida International University’s Biospherics Division, which has secured NASA funding to conduct research in the Everglades. She will make presentations about her research in science classes, so students can benefit from in-depth discussion of the biosphere.

All week long students will be invited to pledge to do their part to help protect the environment, and will be encouraged to devise Earth-saving strategies to adopt in their own lives.