Environmentally Aware, Ready To Help

The West Bloomfield High School EARTH Club was created in 1993 with the mission of promoting environmental awareness and preserving the planet. Environmentally Aware and Ready to Help, the club has involved and empowered thousands of students in environmental action.

We generally meet every other Thursday during the school year, right after school in Mr. Barclay’s room (501) at WBHS. We occasionally skip a week, so check the WBHS EARTH Club Facebook Page for up to the minute information or contact Mr. Barclay, the EARTH club sponsor.

You must attend 70% of meetings to be considered a member in good standing. If you miss a meeting, but want to ‘make up’ your time, you can volunteer for recycling at any time by seeing Mr. Barclay.

If you want to take a leadership role in the club, you can be part of the EARTH Club Executive Board. The EARTH Club Executive Board coordinates all the club’s activities, and meets every other Thursday (the Thursdays when the general membership doesn’t meet). We have an “open” Executive Board, which means that if you show up for 70% of all exec board meetings and 70% of general membership meetings, you are considered a member of the executive board.

Past EARTH club initiatives include:

• coordinating the paper and container recycling program at West Bloomfield High School. Since its inception in 1994, the program has recycled over 100 tons of materials, preventing them from reaching the landfill.
• aiding in rainforest conservation through purchasing acres of rainforest and raising awareness.
• creating environmental education fairs since 1999 for high school- and elementary-aged students, attended by hundreds of elementary school students and thousands of high school students.
• establishing a quarter-mile-long nature trail in the Laker Nature Preserve with a grant from the school district.
• organizing “coffeehouses” with student-provided entertainment to raise funds to purchase native plants.
• removing thousands of invasive plants from the four-acre Laker Nature Preserve behind the school.
• planting native trees and creating a native plant garden
• funding a weather and wind research station at the high school, at an altitude of 60 feet above the ground, which measures and records weather, wind speed, and direction data every five minutes.
• gathering well over a thousand student signatures in support of renewable energy and efficiency in the school district.
• installing the largest tracking solar array of any school in Michigan*

EARTH Club strives to use any raised funds to further its mission by funding renewable energy and efficiency measures at our school, so that all students may be better prepared for Michigan’s new energy future.

* when installed