April 2019 Eco-Extraordinaires

Check out this month’s local leaders in green.

Do you know a DuPage County organization or person that deserves some green kudos? Email [email protected] to explain who you think should be one of our next Eco-Extraordinaires.

Naperville Students Partner with School Cafe for Book Drive to Help Underprivileged Students

As an extension of an English class book project, three students from Naperville North High School decided to take action and run a book drive at school for SCARCE. Kevin Xu, Jackie Liu, and Sam Visser partnered with the school’s cafe, The Half Caf, to offer tokens – which could be used to purchase drinks – in exchange for book donations. The students collected 150 books during their brief campaign March 10th-March 15th. Way to transform an idea into action for your community!

Invesco Downers Grove Awarded the Earth Flag by SCARCE and DuPage County

In March, Invesco of Downers Grove was awarded the Earth Flag by SCARCE and DuPage County. In addition to a number of environmental practices already in place including a robust recycling program, native plantings, and water bottle filling stations, their efforts to earn the certification included updating their lighting to energy efficient fixtures and bulbs, improving indoor air quality by removing toxic air fresheners, and working towards eliminating single-use plastic in their office. Well done!

Local Illinois Wesleyan Student Partners with Staff and Community to Ensure Longevity of Zero Waste Project

Wheaton resident and Illinois Wesleyan University student (and former SCARCE rescue team member) Dominic Gambaiani established a Terracycle collection for cereal box liners and granola wrappers with the Sierra Student Coalition in 2017 in an effort to promote zero waste on campus. With his graduation approaching this spring, Dominic wanted to ensure the project continued past his tenure. He looked to set up partnerships and found a community church that had on-going Terracycle projects. As a result, they expanded their collection options and were able to add bins for each residence hall. He then approached the school to make the collection programs permanent. With lots of student support, the school agreed to manage the drop-offs to the church’s collection center, establish a temporary storage site on campus, and the Sierra Student Coalition got other student clubs on board to help sort the collected materials as a service project. Way to go!