Sustainability is a pillar of The Island School. In every class here, we discuss sustainability, how to achieve it, and how to improve the world and make it more sustainable. Although at home, I’ve had many classes on “going green,” I’ve realized that the concept is much more than just turning lights off when you leave the room. It’s about empowering the current generation to use resources and meet their needs while saving enough for future generations.

In Human Ecology on Monday, we started brainstorming ideas of Final Projects. These projects will be about solving problems by creating more ecologically-friendly systems, either on campus or at home. We brainstormed for a few minutes and threw around broad ideas like resourcing our trash more effectively, saving more water, and keeping the poo-poo garden from smelling bad, which where we recycle all of our human waste through a septic system into fertilizer for plants. It smells bad when non-biodegradable shampoos or over usage of water kills bacteria that are crucial to breaking down waste.

One of the coolest things about The Island School is that we are given real life problems and told to fix them using real solutions that we will input. Being given this responsibility is both challenging and incredibly empowering. I never thought that I could make changes that would create a more sustainable world, but here, that challenge seems in close reach.

I’m so excited to see the projects we each create come to life! With The Island School, I finally feel like I’m vested with enough power to make a difference.