Upton Middle School in St. Joseph has been named an Evergreen School and received an Environmental Service Award from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy for its efforts to be eco-friendly.
Principal Chad Mandarino tells us teacher Melissa Foster last year started the Upton Middle School Environmental Club to get students thinking about how they could be better stewards of the Earth. The club was at Michigan State University this week for a student summit where the school’s Evergreen status was announced.
“An Evergreen School means that you have to take part in at least 20 or more activities around anything from a waste-free lunch program where you’re composting food in organic ways, recycling every week in every classroom, running green awareness,” Mandarino said. “We’re doing some raised beds, planting some native plants for the birds and the butterflies, and something as simple as observing Earth Day which was Monday of this week.”
Mandarino says he sees opportunities for recycling at the school all of the time.
Foster tells us the environmental effort has been student-led.
“For the kids and for me, I feel like this is one of those topics that is becoming more and more important,” Foster said. “Recycling and composting and sustainability. There’s so many good fields now in sustainability, like at Whirlpool or Yeti or at other big companies where reusing what we have and eliminating waste and plastic is very important to the health of the environment.”
Upton Middle School has also built raised garden beds, done composting, and adopted a turtle. Foster says the students were surprised to win their award this week because they feel like the things they’ve been doing are all quite simple.
