Byron Smith
Grade 12
Canandaigua Academy  
June 2009- GoGreen Student of the Month

Here is Byron’s GoGreen philosophy.

“Going green.”  To go green is no easy feat; to be one hundred percent renewable every day is almost impossible.  There are an extremely low number of such people, and with a current global population of 6.7 billion, attempting to rapidly and completely green everyone’s life is nearly impossible.  However, there are small every day steps everyone in developed nations can take to start greening their lives, which I have attempted to include in my own. 

The first step I took in my attempt was to purchase a refillable, reusable Nalgene water bottle, thereby helping to reduce the amount of water bottles hitting recycling plants and landfills.  There are several other simple steps that I have taken in my own life to reduce my carbon footprint.  In my house everything that can be recycled is recycled, and everything that can be composted is composted, keeping the garbage from our house to the landfill at a minimum.  Also all light in our house that doesn’t come from the sun comes from fluorescent light bulbs helping to lower the energy use of our house. 

In addition to these small steps I have also taken a few larger steps. I along with a teacher and several other students from Canandaigua Academy have started a small garden outside the school, which we work on every day as part of our class work.  We have planted everything from tomatoes to a watermelon patch in hopes that when the end of the school year comes community members will adopt the garden and trade labor for farm fresh produce.  Not only to I help run a garden at the academy but I also have a garden at home where we grow the majority of our produce for the summer, everything in the garden is organic from the fertilizer to the pesticides we don’t use.  In addition to the creation of the gardens, I am also a member of Canandaigua’s Greening Committee.  This committee is currently working on a $20,000 grant from the “Sun-Chips” division of the “Frito-lay” company.  This grant is available to anyone looking to green their community, our group is looking at two of the five available grants to put in wind turbines at Canandaigua Academy, and to put up an informational kiosk at Kershaw park.  Any of these steps are easily adaptable to nearly anyone’s life, proving going green starts with a few small steps.