<b>Millbrook Embraces Earth Day of Service and the Green Cup Challenge</b>

Jonathan Lopez
Millbrook has been supporting Earth Day with a 26-mile afternoon roadside cleanup for 15 years, and this year we doubled those efforts, crafting our first Earth Day of Service. 
Earth Day bloomed in 1970 and led to the passage of major environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Today the movement has grown into a world-wide day of service to planet Earth. 

With service as one of our core values and the theme of the year being Environmental Stewardship, celebrating Earth Day is certainly a part of the culture at Millbrook. In fact, the Millbrook community embraces Earth Day initiatives throughout the entire year through community service and by participating in contests such as the Green Cup Recycling Challenge.

This year the community split up into two groups to tackle Earth Day service projects. Vth and VIth formers went to towns in the Catskills that continue to recover from Hurricane Irene’s devastating effects. Meanwhile, IIIrd and IVth formers stayed closer to campus, working on various campus projects and helping with roadside cleanup.

Upperclassmen helped remove debris from homes and businesses in Schoharie and Prattsville. They filled entire dumpsters through their hard work to help communities in need. IIIrd and IVth formers helped with roadside cleanup of local roads, and split up to work on multiple projects throughout campus and at the Trevor Zoo including cleanup on the nature trail and canopy walkay, removal of invasive garlic mustard, preparation of the community garden, wood splitting, and zoo feeding and grading and watering of the zoo path. Each year during Earth Day, students and faculty collect more than a ton of garbage from local roads, and this year was no different.

While Millbrook's Earth Day of Service was a collective effort to make a difference for our planet, dormitories have been competing for a month for recycling supremacy in support of the Green Cup Challenge. Dorms scored points for recycling correctly and not accidentally placing recyclables in trash bins and keeping bottles and cans in their designated red containers as well as paper and cardboard in blue bins. While our recycling efforts continue, so do our efforts to keep the local area clean. Several times a year we continue to clean a two-mile section of Route 44, which we adopted as our responsibility. Our environmental leaders and consciences on campus, Mr. and Mrs. Meigs, continue to lead that effort and many of the other environmental stewardship activities made available to the entire school. 

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