This is a guest post from Georgia Dixon, a CVU EnAct member.

My school, Champlain Valley Union High School of Hinesburg, Vermont, recently completed a Whole School Energy Challenge! Our Environmental Action Club made a goal of reducing our school’s energy usage by 10%. We had a very successful year and were able to change many of the unhealthy habits and infrastructure of our school.

By the end of the year, we were able to cut our energy usage by 9% which is super exciting for us!  If you’re not familiar to energy bills, 9% might not sound like too much, but get this: by cutting out 126,830 kWh of energy use over the course of the year, our club was able to save our school $13,700 in energy costs and save our atmosphere literally thousands of pounds of climate change causing carbon dioxide!  Put a different way, the energy we saved at school this year could power the average Vermont household for 18 years!  Pretty awesome, right?

At the end of the year, to commemorate our accomplishments and raise the profile of the club and the school’s environmental movement, we held a mural competition. Whoever won would create a mural that would represent the club and our environmental mission. Thanks to ACE, the visually striking mural is now proudly displayed in one of the most traveled hallways.

The mural serves as a reminder that though our club has achieved a mighty feat in the last year, we still need to continue into the future to create permanent change. What was so exciting about the mural for the club was that it brought several “groups” in the school together. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the EnAct members that were involved in the effort to get out the message about the environment, it was the art lovers and art students too. Different parts of the school’s community meshed, and the result is a beautiful mural with a strong visual message.

I strongly encourage students and clubs to take advantage of opportunities that ACE offers. Even the smallest things that a club does can have a huge impact.