Sustainability is the way of the future. Without it, our world will not be able to function or handle more people. It can barely handle eight million people. With our world constantly progressing, changing and becoming more innovative than ever, consequences follow close behind. These consequences harm our planet that we call home, and without sustainability, our home won’t exist for the future generations.
Kaneland High School has various club options for students to pick from. There is the Key Club that focuses on volunteering and community service, Student Council which helps students find their voice while working on fun projects and many others that help bring students with similar interests together.
One club that some students felt was missing was a club based around the environment and its sustainability. Senior Hannah Lindgren officially formed the Environmental Impact Club at the beginning of second semester during the 2024-25 school year.
“We are going to talk about how to live a more sustainable and eco-friendly life without having to uproot everything,” Lindgren said.
Lindgren hopes to create a group of students who are passionate about the entire planet, but also the environment relating to the high school in general. She wants to emphasize the importance of sustainable practices and figure out how we can incorporate them into our day-to-day lives. The club will do this by having different activities and excursions that help support their goals of sustainability. Some of these activities include cleaning up trash around the school, painting reusable tote bags for groceries and taking field trips to forests that need trash picked up.
“We are going to make it fun…but also [have it] focus a lot on our planet,” Lindgren said.
Lindgren has been working on this club for the past three years. She has done almost all of the planning, organizing and researching on the topic. With this hard work has come many supporters
“The club was 100% Hannah’s idea,” science teacher Joanna Edelman said. “She organized the first meeting and did all the communication with students.”
Kaneland also has a Science Club, which Edelman runs with fellow science teacher Jason Foster. Students participate in other science, technology, and engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities where they do experiments and a lot more activities that tend to be less environmentally based.
“There will definitely be an overlap between the clubs…we will learn [about] science while making decisions about activities done by Kaneland students,” Edelman said. “I like to think of our students as future global citizens, with the responsibility to live in a sustainable way. Having the club as an option for our students will hopefully lead them into making decisions with the environment in mind. ”
Other students also felt that a club based on helping our climate and community was needed at Kaneland and could benefit lots of students.
“I think the Environmental Impact [club] will just focus on ways to be more environmentally friendly at Kaneland, [and] I feel like we need that,” junior Sarah Syed said.
Syed has helped Lindgren with setting up the club and specifically the social media and outreach aspects, as well as committing to working on the club next year after Lindgren graduates.
“I have always been into the environment…I want to make the world healthy, but I also want to keep myself and my peers healthy and teach healthy living practices,” Lindgren said.
