Congrats to Liyana R an 8th Grader at Chute for designing this Save our Lake poster featured by the City of Evanston at the new beach litter stations.

Celebrating our D65 Sustainability Positive for the 23-24 School Year! Thank you to so many students, staff, caregivers and community members coming together to bring sustainability to life in our schools in so many beautiful ways.

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” ~ Ryunosuke Satoro

Celebrating our positive impact from lunchroom composting and recycling in our schools this school year! Together, we composted over 204,915 lbs of waste and 378,995 trays with 5,946 students participating at 16 schools. We avoided 66.4 Metric Tons of carbon emissions by composting instead of landfilling our waste, that's equal to 1,098 tree seedlings growing for 10 years!

Shout out to all our students and staff dedicated to composting and recycling in our schools, thanks for all your hard work making this sustainability program come to life each day in our schools.

In 2024, our D65 schools mobilized to gather leftover school supplies from classrooms and lockers that would typically go to the landfill from May 13 to June 7. We encouraged sharing and reuse within our schools and D65 Families and restocked school supply closets at Haven!

7 Participating Schools in 2024: Chute, Dewey, Kingsley, Oakton, Orrington, Washington, Willard

Remaining items were donated to the D65 Family Wellness Program, Art Makers Outpost, and SCARCE. A big thank you to all who participated in our D65 End of School Clean Out and giving back to our schools, families and community. Thanks to you as our teachers, staff, caregivers and volunteers who helped make this year's clean out a success!

Success Story: In 2023, Haven Middle School created multiple school supply swap closets that were so successful they are not participating in the 2024 end of year clean out but instead replenishing the supply closets while offsetting new school supply purchasing. Way to go Haven staff and students!

Good news, D65 decided to reinstate my role as the Sustainability Coordinator in addition to hiring a new Science and Sustainability Education Coordinator. I'm looking forward to continue working together and growing this important work across D65.

Calling all SWANCC member communities....Schools, Libraries, and now, Nonprofits are all available to apply for a $500 Waste Reduction Grant!

Do you have an idea for Waste Reduction and need a bit of financial support? Don't wait, apply for a grant today! Need more time to be creative and think through your initiative? No problem. Based on funding availability, applications are now accepted all year!

Waste Grant Announcement

Waste Grant Application

One suggestion for our D65 Schools to streamline collection of recycling and landfill waste our schools: Tandem Dolly, 44-gallon recycling bin, 44-gallon landfill bin. Please coordinate with Karen Bireta if you're interested in submitting a grant application for your school, as we're exploring various grant opportunities.

Sprouts Healthy Community Foundation believe in improving health outcomes by nutrition education, nutrition access, and wellness programs. To that end, they are offering 3 different grants to support both school and community initiatives where Sprouts operates stores.

Take a look at their eligibility and apply today!

• Sprouting School Gardens Grant: For programs that bring hands-on learning and nutrition education to students by building or refreshing a school garden program.
• Growing Healthy Kids Grant: For programs that are helping kids grow healthy habits either at home or supporting nutrition, health, and wellness through community programming.
• Wellness Across Lifespan Grant: For programs that support nutrition education, access to healthy foods, and wellness programs to adults and communities, especially vulnerable populations.

Get to know Evanston's most amazing natural sites, as we celebrate Unplug IL Day on July 13th with an "Evanston Nature Passport" adventure! Families will receive a map of Evanston's natural areas and a guide to fun nature activities that you can continue to enjoy at each location from July 13th-August 21st. Each nature site will have free self-guided and guided activities for you to complete, as you collect all 6 nature stamps on your passport along the way before school is back in session on August 22nd. Free activities will include fishing, birding, scavenger hunts, plant identification hikes, and more! Turn in your completed Nature Passport stamp page by August 21st to be entered into a raffle for prizes. For more information, please call the Ecology Center at (847) 448-8256. Register online to receive your Nature Passport and more information.

This year over 20 schools participated in the Illinois Green Schools Project from all over the state. Students from Kindergarten to High School and everything in between created projects that ranged from reinstating recycling programs to native plant initiatives to water waste and energy reduction campaigns. To learn more about this year’s cohort and each school's projects, check out each school's project profile.

On May 22, 2024, Illinois Green Schools hosted a virtual gathering to celebrate the accomplishments of each school and learn from the top projects selected across the state! View the celebration event recording here.

• D65 Sustainability Positive Impact: 23-24 School Year
• D65 Sustainability Focus: 23-24 School Year
  
• D65 Guidance for Climate Action and Gardens at Schools: 23-24 School Year
  
• D65 Sustainability and Garden Resources Library
• D65 Sustainability Positive Impact: 23-24 School Year
• D65 Climate Action & Garden Community Contact List
• D65 Sustainability Positive Impact: 22-23 School Year
• D65 Sustainability Website