Individuals > The Green Inventor > Bad Ads > Buy Different, Buy Used > Youth Represent! Groups > Go Fish! > Energy Stars > Don't Be Crude > Clean Energy Solutions > Swordfish Surge Back > Spreading the Word About    Sweatshops > The Reasons for Recycling > Rock Bands Plant Forests Innovations > School Savings > Catalog Madness > Smart Vending Machines > Community Cars > Veggie Van

Clean Energy Solutions
Harold Overmann, Iowa's Spirit Lake schools superintendent, walked into a classroom on Earth Day 1991, to talk about the environment. Instead of being the one asking questions, the students started questioning him.

"If the school is interested in preserving the environment," someone asked, "why do we use plastic cups in our lunch program?" "Why do we rely so much on electricity made from fossil fuels?" asked someone else.

The questions inspired Mr. Overmann to start looking for clean energy solutions. Spirit Lake gets very windy because it sits on a high ridge above the grasslands of Iowa. Wind power was the answer.

A single wind turbine (a large windmill) was installed two years later. It made enough electricity to fully power all the elementary schools in the district, and there was even some left to sell. It was so successful that they built a second turbine to create more clean energy.

These two wind turbines will help stop pollution and save the school district $125,000 a year. That money can now go for sports teams, musical instruments and science equipment.

A high school physics teacher calculated that the two turbines will stop the release of more than 5.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide, 8000 pounds of sulfur dioxide, and hundreds of tons of other pollutants.

	Check out why we buy things.
	See how you can take action.