Our middle school students have been hard at work designing an environmentally sustainable version of the State College area from the ground up. Students focused on one key aspect of sustainability, such as energy, water management, transportation, waste, or food systems, and researched innovative solutions to make their city more environmentally friendly. Then they presented their projects through a gallery walk, showcasing their creative designs and strategies.
Overall students did research to understand the current situation in State College, they identified pollution, resource depletion, or climate-related risks that pose challenges in the area, they investigated real world examples of sustainable cities, innovating technologies and policies from cities around the world that could be applied to State College, and they considered the feasibility of their ideas by considering costs, community involvement, and long term sustainability.
Students also worked together to imagine integrated sustainable solutions. One student whose project was about transportation consulted with students researching energy and waste to think about clean energy sources for public transportation. They came up with biofuel powered buses using waste from local farms. The waste expert researched many different models used in cities around the world and proposed a higher tech system that converts methane to energy. One student researching energy made a compelling case for a State College solar farm and wind turbines. Students studying buildings and green spaces found plans for designing green roofs to make them more energy efficient.
Kristin Leung, the middle school science and social studies teacher, said that often the problem with implementing these kinds of solutions is that they are costly up front. She said that one thing the students demonstrated in their projects was that these kinds of solutions pay off and then make money in a surprisingly short amount of time. Charlotte, the student who researched energy confirmed this by finding that “solar panels pay back overtime, because once you buy solar panels, every year it pays back 14.45%, and after around 9.4 years, it is completely paid off, and they last up to 20-40 years, so that money would triple, or even quadruple!”
After this project, the top recommendations that students suggest that State College prioritize in order to become a more sustainable community are bike paths, clean public transportation, rooftop gardens, and wind or solar energy. They found that bike paths and clean public transportation reduce carbon emissions by reducing cars. They found that rooftop gardens use a sunny space that otherwise isn’t used. They can be used to grow food and reduce carbon emissions by reducing transportation of food to grocery stores. Additionally, gardens have been shown to improve mental and physical health and can make a community look more enjoyable. Students found that solar panels on roofs also transform that usually unused space to be more sustainable. Solar and wind energy draw from natural sources like sunlight and wind, which do not disturb the natural environment. Wind turbines and solar panels do not produce air pollution or greenhouse gases when operating which make them a cleaner more reliable source of energy.
Students spent a lot of time and effort on this project and they would like to inspire others to think critically about the role sustainability plays in shaping the future of our communities.