The Harbour View High school Climate Action Group won a grant from the Greater Saint John Community Foundation in partnership with the RBC Future Launch Program. (photo by Dan Culberson)
The Harbour View Climate Action Group got its start last May when one of the founders noticed that the province had no standardized procedures for recycling anywhere in the school system
“Across the entire province there is not a single standard recycling program, it is all done by volunteers,” says co-founder Declan Hartery, a Grade 11 student at Harbour View High School. “Our custodian Art Kincade does it all on his own of his own accord, and he donates the money he gets from cans and bottles to a scholarship, but he’s retiring at the end of the year.”
According to Hartery, bottles will be continued to be donated to help fund the Art Kincade Scholarship. All the bottle recycling will be done by members of the Harbour View Climate Action Group.
From that single issue, a more comprehensive movement has emerged, says co-founder and Grade 11 student Logan Breen. “[We want to] decrease [the] school’s environmental and carbon footprint as well an impact to make our school a better place,” he says.
For its efforts, Harbour View High School was awarded a $30,000 grant by The Greater Saint John Community Foundation in partnership with the RBC Future Launch Program.
Harbour View applied for the grant along with eight other applicants and came out on top based on its ambition to implement climate change initiatives.
“Ultimately Harbour View won because they demonstrated the most urgent need [with] their project focused on climate action,” says Kelly Evans, Executive Director of the Greater Saint John Community Foundation. “They really want to retrofit the entire school to address climate change.”
The group’s ambitions have indeed grown beyond implementing a recycling program.
“We have plans to build some hydroponic garden facilities in the school,” says Hartery. “We plan to use some of [the grant money] to raise the garden beds to [help fix] draining issues, due to the garden being in a low-lying area compared to the rest of the school grounds.”
“We plan to use it to help refurbish the greenhouses as well, to allow for more winter farming availabilities. We [also] plan to install either new water fountains around the school that can be used to refill plastic and metal water bottles.”
This isn’t the first time Harbour View has received a Community Foundation grant to pursue environmentally sustainable projects. In June of 2017 Harbour View was given $15,000 to help finance the construction of the garden and greenhouse outside of the school. Both are used to supplement healthy lunches and snacks throughout the school year.
The garden sits just outside the school. Though it has helped to supply the cafeteria when the school was in the middle of switching food providers the garden lays barely operational in the winter and summer.
“[we want to hire] employees to tend to the garden over the summer so that we can keep a steady influx of produce that goes to our cafeteria and wellness sessions.” says Breen.
These school-wide wellness sessions are one week long and are held once a month. They provide healthy foods during lunch and breaks and encourage students to eat well.
The Harbour View Climate Action Group began with only two members, but throughout the past year the group has grown to more than 20, and sometimes more for certain events, allowing them to fulfill their ambitions of taking on new and exciting projects.
Even without the grant, the group is committed to pursuing projects of all kinds. One of the biggest is a letter-writing campaign says Breen.
“We are encouraging all students at Harbour View to write letters to the provincial government – mainly to the premier about environmental issues that matter to them.”
So far, more than 80 letters have been sent by students with more on the way.
Harbour View’s environmental initiatives extend beyond the boundaries of the school, with the intention of educating even younger people in the community.
“We reach out to elementary schools to teach [younger students] how to garden,” says Breen. “[We also] have sessions where anyone in the Saint John community can come to our garden and learn about gardening.”
A version of this story was published in Huddle, an online business news publication based in Saint John. Huddle is an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
