MG20 Summit: Six Tips for Eco-Friendly Learning | Edtech at Knovva Academy

Author: Eryn Gordon

Students around the globe are getting ready to go back to school this month and reunite with their teachers and classmates. While this is an exciting time of year, it’s also a great time to consider eco-friendly practices. Homework assignments and written lessons can produce a huge amount of wasted paper. Spending eight hours inside a classroom may mean lots of added cooling or heating energy use. With this year’s Model G20Ⓡ theme being climate change, many students wish to find new ways they can positively impact the environment. Check out these 6 tips to add more sustainability to your educational environment. 

Create a Sustainable Wardrobe 

Most students want to start the coming school year with a new wardrobe, but this can mean promoting unsustainable (and sometimes unethical) manufacturing practices. If you’re familiar with the challenges of fast fashion, you may already know that clothing companies design products intended to be thrown away, creating more waste than necessary. This year, shop for clothing made from recycled products or even buy second-hand outfits.  

Buy Greener School Supplies 

Before online shopping, people had only a few retail options within easy traveling distance. Now, millions of brands worldwide are available online at our fingertips. You can find thousands of sustainable options when it comes to your school supplies, including wood-free pencils made entirely from newspapers and eco-friendly notebooks. Every year, approximately 6 billion pens get thrown away, so consider this when buying new items for school. 

Consider Refurbished and Reused Tech 

Each time you buy a new electronic device – whether it’s a cellphone, laptop, or even a charging cable – that item will likely have a mix of cardboard and plastic packaging. This doesn’t take into account the materials used for the actual product, which can cause toxicity when disposed of incorrectly. An alternative is to buy refurbished, which is when a returned product is made ready for resale. These can be found under the “open-box” section on Best Buy’s website. You might also find similar products through online marketplaces or second-hand retailers. 

Bring All Reusable Items 

Every time you get a coffee to go or package a sandwich in a non-reusable plastic bag, you may contribute to the overwhelming amount of single-use plastic items in landfills. To prevent unnecessary waste, think about every plastic item you use in a day. Is it reusable? Swapping out single-use plastic bags with glass containers, and disposable styrofoam cups with metal canteens are great ways to make your lunch eco-friendly. 

Do Some Small-Scale Composting 

Many of us know about composting, but don’t actually do it. Some believe they need to live on a farm in order to compost, but even people who live in apartment buildings can participate. If you’re interested in composting at home, try a mini composting machine that turns your scraps into nutrient-rich soil and use it for potted plants or a small garden bed! If composting isn’t your thing, donate your table scraps through ShareWaste, which connects neighbors to organic matter. 

Change Your Day-to-Day Habits 

A few other ways to improve your sustainability and positively impact climate change on a daily basis include: 

• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator 
• Printing on both sides of the paper
• Renting or buying used textbooks 
• Purchasing dorm supplies from second-hand stores 
• Buying refillable containers for dry erase markers
• Looking for items with a lifetime warranty