Green Design Lab™

Solar One’s Green Design Lab™: Your Blueprint for a Healthy, Green School

Want to green your school by yourself? Order the curriculum for grades 6-12 online HERE!

Help your school go beyond recycling! Bring sustainability to life! Project based learning. A National Standards Aligned Curriculum and Guide, The Green Design Lab™ is a blueprint for greening your school, allowing students to understand the connections between the resources used everyday and how they impact the local environment. Focusing on the physical school building, this Guide aims to help students and faculty realize on-site projects. It provides comprehensive hands-on learning opportunities such as rooftop gardens, building performance and energy efficiency,indoor and outdoor air quality, waste conservation, schoolyard habitats and non-toxic cleansers. Your school is the perfect setting for addressing relevant issues that affect the sustainability of your community. The objective is to facilitate learning that allows students and faculty to think of their school building as an organism connected to the local environment. Paperback, 120 pages. Price: $75.

Get your copy HERE!

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Want us to come to your school and help you implement the Green Design Lab™ (NYC only, please)? Contact Sarah Pidgeon at pidgeon[at]solar1[dot]org for more information on scheduling and fees!

The Green Design Lab™ is a curriculum resource and guide for making your school a healthy and green place to work and learn. The Green Design Lab™ is a program offered by Solar One: NYC’s Green Energy Arts and Education Center.

Using a creative approach to problem solving and sustainability education, the Green Design Lab™ focuses on your school building as a laboratory for hands-on learning about green technologies, design process, engineering and applied science.

The program focuses on six units including Materials, Recycling and Waste, Energy, Water, Air Quality and Food. Each Unit is full of great ideas for projects, hands-on activities that integrate perfectly with science, math and technology standards for all grade levels. Teachers can pick and choose an activity to do in one day or focus on a Unit for an entire semester!

Show this Brochure to your Principal! Download (PDF)

How Can We Help You?

Greening a school is a tough job. We know from experience; so let us help you come up with a plan that works for you and includes your students in the process. We can provide:

  • In-School Technical Assistance
  • Special Hands-on Projects
  • Strategies to Help Meet Resource Use Benchmarks
  • Professional Development

Why Green Your School?

  • We spend nearly 85% of our time in buildings!
  • Schools in the US spend $7.8 billion on energy each year.
  • The financial benefits of greening schools are about $70 per square foot.
  • American school children missed 12 million days of school in 2000 due to asthma. (Source: US Green Building Council)
  • Local Law 86/05 was enacted into law by the New York City Council in late 2005, requiring school districts like New York City to have sustainable school design, construction and operations guidelines required by law. (Source: NYC Green Schools Guide)

Ready to Sign Up?

Tell us about your school and the needs of your community. Fill out this brief Form. Email pidgeon (at) solar1.org or call 646-576-5667 and let us know how you’d like us to get involved!

Lab Archive:

City-As-School High School, 2009 – Check out photos here.

Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day School, 2008 – Check out our blog

Video:

A video from students at Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day School, 2008.

Generous funding for this program provided by HSBC, the 11th Hour Project of the Schmidt Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation.