What is the High School Sustainability Guide (HSSG)?
The HSSG is a comprehensive guide designed by high school students containing user-friendly carbon calculators designed specifically for schools. The site consists of four carbon calculators, each for a different category of a school’s footprint: electricity, gas, food packaging, and transportation. With these calculators, students can take the initiative of determining their school’s environmental impact, and, more importantly, take action to reduce it. The HSSG has simple, cost-effective suggestions for creating and implementing green solutions. Throughout the process of doing this, we believe students will become better equipped to take on projects of their own and gain important leadership skills that will guide them to become confident change-makers. Just like the dynamic nature of our Earth, the HSSG will reflect the ever changing status of climate change as more and more innovative solutions become available.
It is not going to be one corporation, one entity, one person, to solve climate change — it is going to be all of us. So next time you think that your contributions don’t matter, think again.
About The Creators
We are Sascha Weiss and Naomi Lopez, two high school girls living in Los Angeles, CA. When we met in 7th grade, we found we shared a common interest in climate change and environmental science. The more we learned, the more we realized that climate change is not something to be left for others to solve. In 8th grade, we founded the environmental club at our school to start a conversation with our fellow students about environmental issues. That summer, we worked together as research interns at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES). It was at UCLA, with valuable mentorship from the Institute’s former director Dr. Peter Kareiva, that we got the idea to develop a sustainability guide for high school students. We were excited by the idea of creating a tool that would help us reduce the emissions at our own school but also to educate and empower fellow students at other L.A. high schools (and hopefully beyond) to take action on climate change. That’s where the “High School Sustainability Guide” (HSSG) was born.
We want to acknowledge some individuals as well as institutions that were essential in the creation of this guide. We wish to express our gratitude to the incredible web designer and developer at UCLA’s IoES, Scott Gruber, who was so generous with his time and gave us copious amounts of advice and ideas. We would also like to thank Phu Tranchi, the head of experiential learning at Oakwood School (where we’ll be graduating from in 2022). He has been an inspirational figure for us in his own hard work to be an environmental steward. We are also beyond grateful for Dr. Peter Kareiva who gave us the inspiration and the opportunity to start this guide. He helped us think critically and encouraged us to always go the extra mile. Last but not least, we would like to thank the Jewish Federation; this project would not be possible without them.