Congratulations to Ladue’s “SAGE: Student Action for a Greener Earth” team, who placed third in the high school division of the Green Schools Quest. The students reinstated approval for a recycling program in the cafeteria, advocated for sustainability in curriculum, and received commitment from school administration to pilot a sustainability class in the upcoming school year.
LHWHS students Gabe DiAntonio and Anna Reis led the club, which evaluated how we manage waste in our cafeteria. Other contributing student members include Aditi Navjith, Ethan Sandhu, Ari Gottesman, Orion Kornfeld, Sela Masaki, Kaitlyn Thornton, Artur Breternitz, Will Xie, Grace Hu, David Jung, Daniel Jung, Ben Weppler, Leo Liu, and Pranavi Chinta.
As first-time participants, the students rolled with the punches and persevered to finish their project submission from their respective homes during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
68 school and mentor teams participated during the 2019-20 school year, and 44 of these schools submitted materials detailing their work to be reviewed by a panel of impartial judges utilizing this scoring rubric.
Mentors from the Missouri Botanical Gardens and Straight Up Solar helped guide SAGE throughout the project, which included digging through a day’s worth of cafeteria trash to conduct a waste audit. The students also took the initiative to meet with and discuss ideas with district administration and the School Board.
Join us in celebrating these feats in sustainability research! SAGE welcomes questions and comments on their work.