2007 Special Category Winner

Wake County Public School System

1551 Rock Quarry Road

Raleigh, NC 27610

(919) 856-3715

www.wcpss.net

Project Title: Collaborative Conservation

Project Adviser: Christina Larkins

EnergySavers plays a vital role in the Wake County Public School System in terms of energy consumption and saving money on our utilities. When you have a school system with 147 schools with seven new schools scheduled to open in the fall of 2008, and add that to rising costs of energy, you have a recipe for potentially crippling utility costs. EnergySavers helps the school system to lower energy consumption through the help of the students’, teachers’, and staff’s hard work.

The EnergySavers Program continues to provide numerous opportunities for teaching and learning about energy, energy conservation and environmental stewardship. In addition to EnergySavers, Wake County Public Schools also offers inkjet cartridge recycling and FEED THE BIN, a paper recycling program. New this year is the annual “Second Hand Scraps” Contest that allows students to use NEED materials to learn about recycling and then build an object solely of recycled materials that would otherwise end up in the trash.

EnergySavers takes a whole system approach as an action against resource depletion. Through basic education of teachers, students, administrators and other employees in regard to energy principles, both resources and utility consumption are reduced. All of our programs are student driven and students are responsible for running the energy conservation and recycling programs at each individual school under the guidance of the EnergySavers Program. Through everyone’s hard work and dedication, we are able to both cut consumption and help keep our utility costs down so funds can be better allocated for our students.