After years of lobbying, pushing, pulling, border line shouting for it to happen; it finally did. We are finally building solar panels on the roofs of OSC! Now when I say I’ve been waiting for years, I do not mean for the school board to listen to me. They have been doing that consistently whenever I bring up goals for us as an Eco-Schools. What I mean is that it is finally being set into action, that we have finally allocated a budget and are finally setting things into motion as part of our Go Green project.

We are doing this all with the help of Mr Pilapitiya, a school parent, and his company Sierra. They gave a presentation to the leaders of eco-centric services and showed us what their plan was. The first step would be the monitoring of the energy levels in different buildings, so we know how to facilitate them. Even though they had already selected a few buildings, it was suggested that they place the devices to monitor energy intake on at least 1 primary and 1 secondary building. This will help us understand which buildings receive more light, heat etc. and allows us to find patterns in the energy usage across a wider population.

Although the meeting was brimming with information; even budgeting and the layout of the site having fully been planned out I still had one major concern. The monkeys. OSC is one of the few schools worldwide that can boast the fact that monkeys call our campus home. So when it comes to the placement of the solar panels I wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t hinder their path along the roof tops. Mr Pilapitiya set my mind at ease and told me about how the solar panels are quite strong and can take monkeys running and jumping all over them (as long as they don’t use the panels to crack coconuts).

Since I will no longer be at OSC after I graduate, Sam is there to take over from me. Not only Sam, but the rest of the younger grades within Eco-Schools and other environmental services. The only thing I will be helping this school with past my graduation is the accreditation of our next green flag award. Which will take part once I am in university. I look forward to seeing this new environmental step, even though it might feel more like a leap. However, once this is done it will push our sustainability past our boundaries.

(Featured Image Credit: Sierra Group)