The #1 Underutilized Way Schools Can Impact Sustainability

If you’ve ever been outside a school at 2:30 in the afternoon, you know the perfect storm that happens every day. With students running around, buses revving their engines, and cars lined up spilling out into intersections, you know you’ll be sitting there a while.

More than this just being frustrating for the teachers and parents waiting to get students home safe, there’s an array of impacts this chaotic process makes on the whole community — including on sustainability. 

When school releases, car after car sits idling while CO and CO2 are released into the atmosphere. Did you know that “Emissions from vehicles contribute about 60% of all CO emissions?” 

This can add up to over 22.05 tons of CO2 per year being emitted by a single school per year. To counteract that, you’d need to maintain 26 acres of forest for a year, per school! 

Not only does this lead to higher rates of health issues within the community, it also contributes to the increase of the CO2 rate in a community.

As cars, buses, and trucks pass by schools, the trail of long car lines can cause traffic jams leading to hours of increased traffic congestion in a day. With all of these vehicles idling longer than necessary, they also increase CO2 emissions. 

Every second that goes by during arrival and dismissal, a school can either contribute to or reduce its impact on the environment – and the community as a whole. 

So what can a school do to make a significant impact?

Each school can work to decrease the number of minutes it takes to run their arrival and dismissal on each school day. With fewer minutes spent waiting in the car line, schools make an impact you can measure. 

By decreasing the car line by 10 minutes each day, schools reduce the amount of emissions on average by 33%. That’s the same as recycling 318 bags of trash instead of sending them to the landfill or switching 279 incandescent lamps to LEDs. (https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator) 

As the car line shrinks, traffic jams that involve cars that have nothing to do with school dismissal also reach their destination faster and spend less time idling as well. Not only does this make a positive impact on the environment, but it also creates a positive change in the whole community. 

With technology readily available, every school can make an impact by utilizing software that streamlines arrival and dismissal. This empowers schools to speed up the car line and spend more of their time and energy educating students on various ways to increase sustainability. 

With Pikmykid, the school safety and dismissal platform, schools have sped up their car line by 33% and reduced carbon emissions by 7.35 tons per year. That’s equivalent to planting 3 tree seedlings every day at your school. 

Pikmykid works to reduce the car line traffic by giving every parent the ability to announce when they arrive at school. As soon as they get there, the teacher in their student’s classroom receives a notification and is able to send the student out to meet their parent at approximately the same time their parent pulls up to the front of the line.

That way, the student can get into the car at just the right time and the line continues moving. They no longer have to wait for staff using walkie-talkies or megaphones to corral students to and from the classroom. 

Using affordable technology to streamline dismissal allows each school the opportunity to make an impact on environmental sustainability – and make their school dismissal experience stellar and safe for everyone involved. 

Request a demo to see how it can work for your school.

To read more about Pikmykid and creating a sustainability plan for your school, click here to read this study on how your school can do just that!

The Car-line Shuffle: A Sustainable Approach to School Transportation by Marc Steelman