Sustainability is one of those subjects that children and adults can learn about together. Sometimes children make the biggest difference!

At the Division of School Facilities’ Sustainability Committee meeting earlier this fall, Jamie Cloud, the inspiring founder of the Cloud Institute, talked about Jessie-Ruth Corkins, a girl in Vermont who saved her school $90,000 and changed the way the whole state of Vermont heats its school buildings — all before she graduated from high school. Jessie-Ruth was young, in 4th grade, when Vermont instituted its Sustainability Curriculum mandates, Jamie said, it was not that surprising that by the time she entered high school she had taken responsibility for the world she lived in and tried to make it a better place.

That’s what kids do, because they don’t know what’s supposed to be impossible. Some people ask how teachers can find time to teach sustainability concepts among all the other education mandates. “There’s never going to be more time in the day,” said Cloud. “But people have to ask, are we going to educate for sustainability, or for unsustainability?”

Pamela French, a New York parent and the founder of A Greener Apple video series, takes sustainability straight to the streets with the question: “How would you make New York a greener apple?” She asked this question of students, parents, and educators at the Green Schools Alliance’s Green Schools NYC Fair, held last spring at the Collegiate School. Enjoy her piece below and let us know how you would make New York a greener apple in the comments!