Cort Hammond has brought a global view to Tahoma High School with a goal to use that perspective to help raise awareness about environmental issues among his fellow students.

Last year as a sophomore new to Tahoma High, Hammond sought to establish here one of his favorite things from his previous school, the American School of Paris.

“I was new to this school last year and at my previous school we’d had the Green Team so the recycling program was excellent,” Hammond said. “There was an environmental club before but it never actually became an environmental club. They just started out the paperwork.”

Hammond led the charge to rejuvenate the club after he noticed that awareness of their impact on the environment was something that needed to be improved among the student body.

He has always worked to improve the environment in his life. Having traveled the world with his parents, thanks due to his father’s job with The Boeing Co., Hammond has seen how other cultures approach being green and not just recently while he was living in Paris.

“We used to live in Germany and I remember when I was around three I would go with my parents to drop off recycling and pick up recycling bags at the recycling station,” he said. “So, it’s always been part of what I thought about.”

Once he got the paperwork completed to get the club off the ground, Hammond said, the first priority was to get permanent recycling bins into all the classrooms. There were cardboard boxes in some classes but it was a decision dependent upon the teacher, he explained.

For some time, students from the school’s special education classes had collected the recyclable materials from those boxes in classrooms as well as bins in the library, he said.

“We definitely appreciate that contribution (from the special education students) because without them it definitely would have taken a lot longer,” Hammond said.

A list of volunteer projects was also developed but with all the formalities of getting the club off the ground it just ended up being impractical to try and take on some of the endeavors Hammond and the other members had in mind.

They were assisted by Marcus Buser, a student in Rick Haag’s video production class, Hammond said. Buser created a video to announce the club which gave “some publicity to our cause and also to encourage recycling.”

One project they did get off the ground last year, Hammond explained, was a bottle cap collection.

“We collected bottle caps and put them in plastic bottles because caps can’t be recycled (with other items) and they’re hard for the recycling machines to process,” he said. “So we collected them and we’re going to send them to a company that recycles the bottle caps and turns them into other battle caps for their products.”

This fall Hammond and the rest of the club members will have other projects to tackle like adopting a road to do litter clean up on and completing the school’s network of permanent recycling bins.

“We already started on getting the 25 recycling bins, we have eight, so we need 17 more,” he said. “I met two weeks ago with the custodian and Lori Cloud (district financial services director). I just got an e-mail from her asking if I wanted her to order the bins and I told her yes, so it looks like that is going to be achieved very soon.”

In mid-July he and some other students attended a conference in New York City with district staff that focused on sustainability and systems thinking. While they were there they came up with a list of projects and events they want to do this school year.

Among those was a visual a demonstration that would show Tahoma High students just how much trash they create.

“We’re going to stack up I think 20 garbage bins (that hold 32 gallons each),” Hammond said. “That’s how many bins of trash we fill every day in the lunch room alone. That’s what we want the students to see when they come to orientation. If we don’t do it then then we will certainly do it on the first day of school.”

Hammond envisions a large tower of trash cans that will be “a significant symbol of how much we waste.”

He has also spent time this summer working as a member of the Ecology Youth Corps picking up trash along the side of state highways which has further stoked his passion for getting his fellow students to adopt a road to clean up.

“As far as I’m concerned, everyone should have to do it, it’s amazing,” Hammond said. “It’s one of those things where once you’ve cleaned it, you don’t want it to get dirty again. It also just blows you away how much trash there is … one day in a two-tenth of a mile stretch we had 74 bags of trash. It was horrible, it was just disgustingly dirty.”

Hammond described that summer job as “a life changing experience.”

On a long term scale, Hammond would like to see the school build a wind turbine, or maybe add solar panels to some buildings.

Hammond and the environmental club has also been working with Tahoma Superintendent Mike Maryanski on ways to reduce energy consumption at the high school. Earlier this year the district board of directors hired an energy consultant to look at ways to reduce such costs across the district as another way Tahoma can save money during this rocky economy.

“One of his goals is to reduce energy consumption in the school,” Hammond said. “So, we’ve been talking about different ways we can save energy with the lights and so on.”

Maryanski posted some of Hammond’s thoughts on the trip to New York for the conference in July and before he did, Maryanski said, “I am eager to hear what he has to say because he is one of the critical leaders in the Environmental Club at the high school. His energy and commitment will be necessary as we move into the future.”

Reach Kris Hill at khill@maplevalleyreporter.com or (425)432-1209 ext. 5054.

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