On April 22, it will hardly be a happy Earth Day. From global warming to mass pollution, the Earth is plagued with environmental issues, and AHS in many ways reflects this degradation.

The school will have burned through nearly 5 million kilowatt hours of electricity since the previous Earth Day. Fortunately, AHS and Fairfax County are working to reduce the energy consumption of the school, partly out of a desire for environmental improvement, and partly to reduce expenditures on energy.

“We are continuously improving FCPS building efficiencies and have had an office working at it for over 30 years,” said FCPS coordinator of energy management Tom Reinsel.

These include “installing, replacing, and upgrading energy management control systems,” and “optimizing school bus routes” to reduce distance traveled and fuel expended.

“We have been able to actually reduce our energy consumption over the last several years by implementing a variety of energy programs. This has saved FCPS several million dollars,” said Reinsel.

But energy consumption is not the only way the school impacts the environment. Landscape degradation is another issue; over a square quarter-mile of trees will have been cleared from nearby Ossian Park.

“That park,” said Green Atoms environmental club sponsor Joelle Rudney, “I can hardly even look at that.” It is unclear if any effort or concern was placed on the environmental perspective before the decision to clear the park of trees was made.

Despite these abounding environmental issues, Earth Day appears trivial to a significant bulk of the AHS student body. The overwhelming majority of AHS students seem largely unconcerned with Earth Day. In an A-Blast survey, the majority of students said they would be doing “nothing special” for the holiday.

When asked, most were unaware the day of environmental recognition was coming. “Wasn’t Earth Day yesterday?” said freshman Chelsey Garcia. Yet students can present numerous excuses for ignoring environmental issues.

“High school people pay attention to other things- sports, school, girls, boys… not the environment,” said Garcia.

Senior Connor Volk of the Green Atoms environmental club presents another explanation.

“A lot of it is the parents,” he said. “If you’re not brought up thinking it’s an issue you’re not going to do anything about it.” And it is difficult to pay attention to an issue that does not overtly manifest itself in one’s life.

“Students don’t really care. It’s because it doesn’t directly affect us, “ said sophomore Haben Berihun.

However, a minority of students at AHS have taken to promoting environmental issues, especially on Earth Day. Called the “Green Atoms,” these students have worked on projects to improve the environment on a local level, and increase awareness of significant environmental problems.

For Earth Day specifically, the Green Atoms will “have an outing to remove invasive [species] from Round Hill Park,” said club sponsor Joelle Rudney. Throughout the year, the Green Atoms have had additional projects with the aforementioned goals.

“We helped out at the Just World Festival. We recycled and had a presentation and were selling reusable bottles people can use instead of single-use plastic bottles,” said Volk.

Later in the year, the club will be having “a couple clean-ups and help mulch a local park,” said Volk. “We’re going to have in the spring some tree plantings and have a couple nurseries donate plants.”

Additionally, the Green Atoms will be hosting speaker Aashish Bhimani, a representative from the California-based nature conservation organization, the Sierra Club. He will be focusing on a rarely acknowledged aspect of environmental degradation, the impact of human diets.

“When the United Nations issued a report on what were some of the main contributing factors to climate change, people were shocked to find out that our diets affected the planet more than transportation,” said Bhimani. He began working through the Sierra Club to understand the personal impact of individuals’ diets on the environment.

“I started promoting more sustainable eating which included eating more veg[etarian] meals and locally grown foods because it uses less resources. Instead of feeding the grains and crops to the animals for many years, if we just ate them directly we don’t have to cultivate as much land and are saving other precious resources- water, petroleum [and] etcetera,” he said.

Bhimani is now part of the Sierra Club’s “True Cost of Food Campaign” which works to raise awareness about the negative environmental impact of livestock consumption. The UN and the Sierra Club promote a reduction in the consumption of meat to help reduce the impact of livestock cultivation.

However, as a realistic option for high school students, this suggestion is easier said than done.

“With a vegetarian diet… it’s easy to adopt, it’s hard to be nutritionally balanced,” said AHS Chef Christine Gloninger.

“I would talk with a nutritionist,” she said, “because students are still growing.” The exceptional nutritional demands of students make the health concerns of a vegetarian diet significant. Many nutrients that are important for growing high school-aged individuals are difficult to obtain in a vegetarian or meat-reduced diet.

Therefore, the UN-recommended meat-reduced diet presents a notable dilemma for high school students. It reduces students’ environmental impact, but also presents health risks. Although, there are options to permit the move toward a meat-reduced diet that still fulfill students’ nutritional demands.

Protein, for example, which is critical for growth can be found in several sources outside of meat such as “beans and rice… tofu products, seitan… and mushrooms,” said Gloninger.

Fats are also important for high school students, but difficult to find outside of meats. “Your brain needs fats to run. [Also] If you don’t have enough fats in your diet… you won’t grow to your potential,” said Gloninger.

Iron is an additionally important nutrient. Responsible of the transport of oxygen in the bloodstream, iron is “a huge one.” But vegetarians can “find it in some green leafy vegetables,” said Gloninger.

So a meat-reduced diet is plausible, but still a challenge. Another alternative that reduces environmental impact but does not restrict nutritional content is eating local or organic. Large farms are responsible for most environmental degradation, while local farms or organic farms have less of an environmental impact.

“Factory farms… stuff the most amount of animals in the smallest amount of space [and] are one of the main contributors to water pollution because they dump their hormones and antibiotic filled wastes into waterways,” said Bhimani.

Compared to a meat-reduced diet, eating local is a simple alternative that produces a positive environmental impact. “We forget that eating local and eating seasonally is the best we can do,” said Gloninger. Not only is local food less environmentally degrading, it is also more flavorful because small farms do not follow the factory farm policy of “picking [produce] less than ripe… [and] using preservatives to get them here,” said Gloninger.

The downside of local farmers markets or organic eating for high school students is a greater economic demand.

“It does hurt your pocketbook,” said Gloninger. Organic and local food tends to cost slightly more than a factory farm food product of they same type and quantity.

So reducing your foods’ impact on the environment is not easy, and changing eating habits remains only one facet of a broad spectrum of environmental issues to reflect upon on Earth Day. Across the Earth, problems abound. A massive Texas-sized cloud of plastic waste was recently discovered floating in the Pacific, poisoning fisheries. The Global Environmental Summit at Copenhagen failed to produce any significant international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and nearly six billion trees have been felled since last year’s Earth Day.

But Bhimani has hope. Despite the global expanse of environmental issues, the solutions settle on a personal level. “Young people are the decision makers of the future and are more likely to ask the questions that need to be asked,” he said. So, despite the signs of apathy, AHS may shift from red to green this Earth Day.