“Energy saved from one recycled aluminum can is equal to the energy used by a television running for three hours or by using half a gallon of gas,” said senior Thao Bach, an officer of the environment club.
Friday, the environment club, along with members of this school’s greengineering program, held EnviroJam, a fundraiser, which showcased a documentary clip, environmental stations and musical performances. All of EnviroJam’s proceeds will go toward Green Decade, an environmental organization in Newton.
One environmental station was the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE), a nonprofit group, which works in high schools in the area to encourage students to Do One Thing. “Just pledge to carpool or recycle and do one thing for a year that can lead you down the path of doing more,” said Brian Stilwell, New England Educator of ACE.
Stillwell gave a presentation earlier this year describing climate change and what citizens can do to stop it.
Boston Area Gleaners set up a booth next to the little theatre. Boston Area Gleaners “works with farms to recover food they won’t sell and redistribute it to homeless shelters to reduce food waste,” according to the environment station host Meryl Summer.
Another station, which was sponsored by the Mass Audubon Society, provided flyers for summer camps and programs for people of all ages.
Also on display was Green Decade’s Magic Energy Bike. When ridden, the energy from the pedaling turns on light bulbs on the handlebars. Greengineers are working to manipulate this design to power graduation.
Even the tickets were environmentally friendly, as they were made out of plastic supermarket bags fused together.
A highlight of the performance part of the night was senior Emmett Greenberg and sophomore Sam Thornly drumming on the djembe, a West African drum. The unorthodox performance included variations of one popular African drumbeat. The crowd could not help but drum the catchy rhythm in their laps.
Directly after intermission, the environment club screened a video preview of Bag It, a documentary about the dangers of wasting plastic. Entertaining and informative, the preview of the documentary left the audience itching to see the full-length film. It will be shown Wednesday, June 13 at this school and is currently available on Netflix.
“Do the wave!” shouted the members of Stone Cold Fox, the band that performed right after the preview. “And back again!” they yelled. Stone Cold Fox excited the crowd with the wave and with their six original one-minute songs.
Keeping with the original music theme, sophomores Alex Fabry and Sam Mayer performed “Hey There Hurricane,” a song written by Mayer. The tune was so catchy that members of the audience could not help singing along to the chorus.
For the closing act, senior Melissa Weikart performed a beautiful rendition of “Starry Eyed.”
The infectious music, the informative environmental stations and the interesting movie made EnviroJam a rousing success.