Tree Plenish, a student-led program that works to generate more sustainable schools by replenishing the environment with trees, has been introduced to Scotch Plains Fanwood High School. 

The Go Green Initiative is a club at SPFHS that works to create an eco-friendly environment and teach others how to go green.

Tree Plenish reached out to Zach Rittner, one of the advisors for Go Green Initiative, in October, 2020. 

“We were inspired to partner with Tree Plenish because they are a committed organization with clear goals and resources for us to use,” Co-President Isabela Segarra said.  

Together, Tree Plenish and Go Green Initiative plan to plant trees based on the amount of paper usage at SPFHS. 

“Go Green Initiative’s goals are to sell 240 trees as we have used 2.4 million sheets of paper in the 2018-2019 school year,” Co-President Jenna Lee said.  

The student body can also help with this mission. Trees are being sold by Go Green Initiative for only five dollars each. 

“We have a wide range of trees to purchase: River Birch, Red Maple and Eastern Redbud,” Lee said. 

Outside of Tree Plenish, students can also pay attention to their paper usage and try to be more sustainable. Moreover, Go Green Initiative wants to help the school district make some sustainable changes. 

“Personally, I have stopped printing out my classwork and using the iPad to take notes and do classwork,” Segarra said. “From here forward, we would like to have a discussion about our extremely high paper usage which could be cut down by a substantial amount if we made a couple of changes.” 
 
In order to help save the environment, contact Go Green Initiative to purchase a tree. If unable to do so, it is important to regulate paper usage and not waste the trees. 

“Any amount of participation or advertisement is appreciated,” Lee said. “This is a huge event that SPF got to be a part of and we would love for it to be successful.”