Drive it Down! – reducing emissions at your school
For the average New Zealander, transport contributes 90% of their personal, direct carbon dioxide emissions. People who drive to work or school can reduce their own emissions by around 20% simply by swapping to a low-carbon transport option one day per week.
Local CO₂ measurements
Scientists from GNS installed low-cost sensors at school gates to help with the visualisation of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 during school drop-off hours.
The visual data helped students to action initiatives to drive down the carbon dioxide emissions at their school gate. They were then able to measure the impact of their initiatives to see how their change in behaviour had driven down carbon emissions.
GNS Science partnered with Auckland’s Meadowbank School to measure atmospheric greenhouse gases at the school gate. This inspired the students to organise a ‘drive it down’ campaign and reduce their carbon footprint.
It shocked us seeing the spike in the morning during drop off time and we knew we could take action to reduce this, but we needed to get the whole community involved – we couldn’t do it alone.
Use the Meadowbank School experience as a context to create student-led initiatives to reduce emissions at your own school gate!
In this activity, ākonga read an article, research and graph individual transport methods and then consider what action they can take to reduce the school’s greenhouse gas footprint.
By the end of the activity, ākonga should be able to:
use literacy skills to read an article
use numeracy skills to gather and interpret data
discuss the relationship between transport options and greenhouse gas emissions
use and critique evidence from the Drive it Down! project as it relates to their own school
consider ways to use this information to reduce their own school-gate emissions.
Download the Word file (see link below).
