Environmental Council

Cincinnati Country Day School is an exceptional school committed to educational excellence and character development. The Environmental Council is a faculty-led initiative with a vision to promote environmental awareness both in and out of the classroom.

By evolving a spirit of environmental mindfulness throughout the CCDS community, the Environmental Council strives to develop an interdisciplinary core thread of environmental studies into the Pre-K-12 curriculum. As a part of this curriculum initiative, we plan to create an Outdoor Educational Area (ODEA) to animate classroom learnings.

To introduce ourselves to the CCDS community and to achieve our mission, we followed a three-step model outlined below.

Raising Awareness

We raise awareness by celebrating what we already do to connect children with living communities:

  • Classroom highlights
  • Activities
  • Celebrating partnerships
  • Celebrating history

Developing Skills

We focus on recycling paper used at school and home. We continue to partner with Indian Hill to recycle cardboard, glass, plastic bottles, and aluminum cans. In addition, we have a partnership with Abitibi Paper Retriever to focus on recycling paper on campus and at home. Blue recycling bins are placed in all classrooms and near printers. The logistics of collecting paper from the blue bins and delivering it to the Abitibi bin includes the following:

  • Early Childhood House collects paper as well as plastic bottles
  • Fourth grade collects for Elementary and Lower Schools
  • Middle School’s student council recycling committee collects for the Middle School
  • Upper School advisories rotate through a collection schedule

With these procedures we collected over three tons of paper in the first year alone—enough to save seven cubic yards of landfill—and have continued going strong ever since!

Internal Grant Fund

We received a generous anonymous grant to encourage the community to take action. Students, faculty, and staff think of a project, and we provide the funds for them to complete it. The possibilities are limitless as long as it is a project that will connect students with living communities in and out of the classroom and/or raise their environmental mindfulness.

To learn more click here and enter a beautiful green space.

CCDS