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Green Giants: students start sustainable initiative, participate in environmental challenges

Published in Past Articles  |  
Sophomore Matt Rauschenbach tie-dying an old t-shirt for one of their challenges. The challenge was called “upcycling,” and required the group to make something better than it was before. Sophomore Matt Rauschenbach tie-dying an old t-shirt for one of their challenges. The challenge was called “upcycling,” and required the group to make something better than it was before. photo | courtesy of the Green Billikens' Twitter

Going green has taken a new form at Saint Louis U. High this year with sophomores Matt Dorsey, Liam Heffernan, Sam Pottinger, and Matthew Rauschenbach participating in Project Green Challenge (PGC).

The challenge is run by Teens Turning Green, a California-based organization that works to educate students worldwide on environmentally sustainable choices. The students found out about the program through science teacher Mary Russo, but have been working independently on the challenge since it started on Oct. 1.

PGC sends participating groups a set of three challenges that involve environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional methods of treating food, conserving energy and materials, and more. The challenges come ranked as green (easy), greener (medium), and greenest (hard). 

The teams earn points for the challenges they submit each day, gaining 20 points for a green challenge, 40 for a greener challenge, and 60 for a greenest challenge.

The challenges are given every day in October, and over 3,000 students are participating in PGC from 49 states and 23 countries. For ten days, the SLUH students were in first place with the most collective points before deciding to stop submitting challenges on Oct.19 because the challenges took too much time and interfered with school work. 

“It was a kind of stressful experience because we only had a day to do all three of the challenges, so it took a lot of teamwork and communication, ” said Dorsey. 

Despite not having completed challenges for over a week, the group of SLUH students remains in the top 30 of teams competing.

From their success with challenges so far, the team has won about $200 worth of merchandise, ranging from flip-flops to organic food.

Despite having dropped substantially in places since they stopped completing challenges, the group still has a chance to finish among the top sixteen teams, as the points from challenges are only worth 20 percent of the overall score.  

 The top sixteen teams get to send a delegate to the four day eco summit held by Teens Turning Green in California. At the summit, delegates do more research and present what they’ve learned from participating in PGC, and the first place winners of the competition will be decided. 

“It was actually a good learning experience, it just took up too much time and it wasn’t feasible for us to keep doing it through the whole month of October,” said Rauschenbach.

Updates about the group can be found on Twitter @GreenBillikens.