Recently a student told me she was going on paper strike and was refusing to use some note page or another than I gave her during class. She said she was concerned about the role of schools in climate change. Having never heard schools mentioned as a source of emissions, I told her not to worry as there are far worse culprits. To really win, I googled “schools carbon emissions” in front of the class, which ended up being a lesson for me in not asserting facts that I haven’t checked!
It turns out schools ARE fairly major sources of emissions. A 2023 report from the Climate Ready Schools Coalition states that, in California, schools are responsible for almost 10% of the state’s overall emissions. An article from Harvard on the subject points out that “Our schools operate the largest mass transit fleet in the country, with 480,000 school buses. Our schools serve seven billion meals annually. And all of those things add up to a sizable carbon footprint.”
So let’s think about the major emissions sources from schools and how we can address them. Per the above quote, school buses are a major source of emissions, as are emissions related to the food prepared and served at schools. Energy to power lights which are on all day, computers, etc. is another source. Schools also consume a TON of paper daily, and the associated energy costs with producing paper and constantly trashing or recycling it are also at play.
School Buses
Let’s assume most school buses are currently gasoline operated. How much energy would we save if we moved to electric school buses?
The Union of Concerned Scientists reports that electric bus emissions are between 29-87% lower than diesel powered buses. So already, we know that beginning to transition our bus fleets over to electric will result in lowered emissions for schools.
The next question we should ask is why school buses are necessary to begin with. In NYC, where I am, school buses move students to schools out of their immediate neighborhoods. Different zones and neighborhoods in the city have markedly different school quality. The end goal should be to ensure that each neighborhood has high quality elementary, middle, and high school options, as well as strong special education offerings, so students can travel shorter distances (hopefully by walking, scootering, or biking!) for the same high quality education. In more rural areas, where people are much more dispersed, electric buses may well be the best option. As more and more of the world moves to urban centers, our goal should be to ensure all neighborhoods have access to non-car-type transportation, like trains or streetcars, so we can move more people with less (or no!) energy.
Food Served at School
American school cafeterias have quite a negative reputation, and in my opinion, it is mostly deserved. To be fair, it’s challenging to cook nutritious, healthy, culturally appropriate meals for hundreds or thousands of students per day.
I worked at a private school which was known for having high(er) quality food, and they had a system where they took lunch orders from a list of options in the morning, and then the cafeteria would essentially cook to order. I think that could be an effective strategy in countering food waste, as students are hopefully choosing foods they enjoy and plan to eat. It may require an investment in additional cafeteria staff, and would require additional administration from homeroom teachers, but I do think we could automate this process in a relatively painless manner.
Within cities, schools could enter into partnerships with local food producers to ensure the foods they serve are fresh. Because local foods literally don’t travel as far to reach their final destination, this would cut down on emissions associated with transport. In addition, schools could plan their menus around growing calendars, and plan to serve mainly what is in season.
Schools tend to serve high amounts of dairy based foods at schools, which is an interesting choice considering that lactose intolerance is the dominant genes for most racial groups (the exception is those with Northern European ancestry). Moving away from dairy and meat towards more vegan options would have a positive impact on carbon emissions as well.
Energy Costs of School
Even as we move to a grid powered by wind, solar, and other renewables, we should continue to implement energy saving measures at schools. Some thoughts on how this may look:
- Ensuring the heat or AC is lowered during non-school hours;
- Ensuring all newly built schools are built to passive standards, meaning basically that they are so well insulated and thoughtfully situated that they self-heat and self-cool. (Two such schools are coming to Brooklyn, NYC!);
- Ensuring that all lights in classrooms and bathrooms are motion activated so they turn off when not in use;
- Ensuring technology is up to date so that it is energy efficient, AND ensuring old technology is recycled or donated appropriately.
Paper Consumption
Paper consumption is another top contender — as a teacher, I struggle with constant paper use but also strongly believe that working on paper is far superior for students’ learning versus working on a Chromebook or some other technology. To really be clear, I think reliance on technology in the classroom (like schools where all the work is done on Chromebooks) is detrimental to children’s neurodevelopment, focus, and ability to deeply learn and retain information.
Record Nation says that “[a] typical school will use an average of 2,000 sheets per day, meaning that during a full school year of 160 days, a school will chew through over 320,000 sheets of paper per year.” Times that by 100,000 schools in the USA –> our schools are using around 32 billion sheets of paper each year!
Stop Waste dot org says that “[t]he amount of energy and materials it takes to make a ton of office paper is reduced by 4.3 tons of CO2 when recycling paper. 20 cases of 30% post-consumer recycled content office paper saves 1 ton of CO2. Buying just 6 cases of 100% recycled paper also saves 1 ton of CO2.” This adds up — not the perfect solution, but an interim measure. As I don’t foresee us moving learning entirely over to the computer (as stated above, I believe there are many drawbacks to that!) we may have to keep developing paper recycling to minimize the resources it uses and the energy it takes to produce it. We can also begin to move to other sources of paper, like bamboo, hemp, or straw, which all are faster growing and more sustainable than tree-based paper.
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