Sustainability

The goal at Gilman is to live and learn green and to nurture Gilman graduates who care as deeply about the environment as they do character and leadership.

Boys in every division enjoy outdoor education experiences: fifth grade at Echo Hill, eighth graders during Expedition Eight, and ninth graders in Gilman's Outward Bound program. Students have planted more than 70 donated sycamores, dogwoods, cottonwoods, black walnut, and gum trees near Stony Run stream. Lower School boys plant and tend a garden.

Each division offers a club for environmental issues. Concern about the 90% drop in the Monarch butterfly population led Lower School boys to design and develop a butterfly garden, which has become a certified Monarch Waystation. In the Upper School, a year-long science course is devoted to environmental sustainability.

Gilman boys devote time to supporting the environment even when not in school. They clean the Stony Run stream, helping eliminate invasive species and test water quality. Students take time on the weekends to plant gardens. They even built our outdoor classroom along Stony Run.

Lumen Center Green Roof

A green roof lasts longer, provides cooling cost savings, mitigates urban heat island effects, may reduce requirements for stormwater management systems, and demonstrates responsible environmental stewardship. Plus, the roof is pretty cool in aerial photographs!

Rain Gardens

Four rain gardens around campus not only provide beauty but also filter rainwater, provide wildlife habitat and reduce the amount of grass to mow.

Lower School Gardens

Students plant and tend their own gardens irrigated with water collected in nearby rain barrels. The garden is the legacy of retired science teacher and master gardener Margaret Olgeirson. The boys also created and maintain a certified Monarch Waystation.

Housekeeping

Gilman purchases and uses eco-friendly toilet tissues, paper towels, and cleaning chemicals. Motion sensor lights have been installed all around campus to ensure that lights are not left on longer than needed. Lights in the Finney Athletic Center arena have been retrofitted to provide greater efficiency, and a more efficient air handling system has also been added.

Recycling

We recycle many materials beyond the expected paper, plastics, and cans. For recycling, the building and grounds staff collects all metals from projects, including aluminum, copper, lead, and steel. Batteries are also collected and sent for proper disposal.

Anything that can be composted (including milk cartons and napkins) goes into the composting buckets in the dining hall. Other than milk, all other beverages are served in glasses. The only true trash generally comes from saltine wrappers or ice cream wrappers. We can see the results: before composting, the School processed 128.5 tons of trash. Since composting, that number has averaged 83 tons.

Solar panels, 336 in total, installed on the roofs of the Science and Lower School buildings provide teachers with a hands-on tool to teach about solar energy. The panels' performance can be monitored from any classroom on campus. Data gathered from monitoring the panels' performance can be used in science and math curricula in all three divisions, including the physics, biology, and chemistry classes in the Upper School, the earth sciences units in the Middle School, and in the Lower School science and math classes.

We Love Compost

Food waste is a major contributor to the methane gas formation found in landfills. Methane gas is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat near the earth's surface.

Gilman was the first school in the area to implement a commercial-scale food waste collection for composting. At lunch, 100% of our food waste is composted. Students separate their waste into appropriate containers, only one percent of which becomes trash for landfills. Additionally, we receive new soil proportional to the compost credits we receive from our partner, Waste Neutral, for use in plantings around campus.

Our food composting program began in September 2009. In the first three months alone, we saved 17.13 tons (or 34,260 pounds) of food waste from going to landfill; the total for the year was 52,640 pounds. We've kept an awful lot of gas from escaping into the atmosphere.

To Tray, or Not to Tray

Gilman was one of the first independent schools in the area to go trayless. Instead, students receive their meals on a regular-sized round dinner plate. The thinking is two-fold: first, not having a tray to carry plates limits the amount of food one can take, therefore reducing waste, and second, not having extra trays to wash conserves water and the energy to heat dishwashing water. Other schools have followed our lead.