Third-quarter was a hectic time for Students for Sustainability, especially with a lot of our plans being cut short when school got shut down for the rest of the year. Many of the projects that were planned for this quarter concerning Marine life and Water cleanliness revolved around educating the students about plastic pollution in our oceans, as well as overfishing. Our club project was to raise funds for a water bottle-refiller station to mitigate the use of plastic water bottles. Encouraging students to not use one-use plastics are a great way to show some care for the growing problem in our oceans, such as microplastics and the large garbage patches that accumulate due to ocean currents. Read more about microplastic pollution and how you can reduce your plastic use here.
Aside from the water bottle refillers, which are still a goal for the club this coming year, we were able to replace the old microwaves in our school's cafeteria and teacher's lounge.
The students at my school always bring food for lunch that requires the use of microwaves. However, the majority of the microwaves in both the cafeteria and the teacher's lounge are very old and take too much time to heat the food. Originally the club thought that the slow-heating was a result of a low-wattage setting that could be fixed, but it turned out it was just because of the deterioration of the microwave's machinery. So, with the money from the Used Book Sale, the club purchased 7 fully-functional microwaves to mitigate the wasted energy imputed into the old microwaves.
Then, we tested the heating power of each microwave by seeing how hot a cup of water would get in one minute. Weeding out the microwaves with comparatively low power output, they were replaced by the new ones the club purchased. The replaced microwaves that were still usable were donated to Savers so that they did not end up in the trash.
All that was left to be done was inform the students of the new microwaves so that they wouldn't overcook their food, or start any fires since these new microwaves have much more power than the old ones. A quick reminder added to the morning announcements for a couple of days made sure this would not become a problem, and luckily there were no fire drills as a result of someone burning their food.