Making an Impact for a Cleaner Alabama
It has been a busy and exciting year for the Alabama PALS Clean Campus Program! This year, I had the privilege of visiting many schools across our great state, ranging from elementary schools to colleges, to promote our shared mission of keeping Alabama clean and beautiful. I spoke with students from elementary schools to college about ways they can make a difference in their homes, schools, and communities. I like to emphasize the ripple effect: small changes lead to big impacts. It all starts with you! Your actions can lead to a big problem or a big solution.
Many of our state’s community colleges actively participate in Alabama PALS (People Against a Littered State) programs, including the Spring Clean-Up and Adopt-a-Mile. This year, Jamie Mitchell, PALS Executive Director, and I had the honor of speaking to the Freshman Class of 2028 at Miles College. These students have enthusiastically joined the Clean Campus Program, and we are excited to see how their leadership will impact not only the beautiful campus of Miles College but also the surrounding community of Fairfield, AL.
Christy Waddell, our Adopt-a-Mile Coordinator, and I visited Council Traditional School in Mobile on our way to the annual Coastal Cleanup. Council Traditional, an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School, is encouraging its fifth graders to explore the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These students are delving into how local governments and businesses can make a difference. As part of their IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) Exhibition in May, they presented environmental issues tied to their chosen SDG and proposed actionable plans to address them locally. The enthusiasm of these fifth graders was contagious! A group of them even participated in the Coastal Cleanup zone at Dauphin Island!
Bear Exploration Center’s Green Team in Montgomery has been a part of the Clean Campus Program since 2017. They have an amazing group led by the art teacher, Mary Bonikowski. It’s no wonder they often have winners in the Poster Contest, and they also usually enter the scrapbook contest. The Green Team not only keeps their campus clean but also does many beautification projects around the school and builds school pride. Bear has a wonderful outdoor classroom where they grow vegetables, flowers, herbs and have a great composting bin.
Montgomery Christian School has gotten involved in the Clean Campus Program for the first time year. The school is looking forward to the spring poster contest and taking plenty of pictures to document their journey to put into a scrapbook to enter the scrapbook contest in the fall. I was invited to visit their Kindergarten and First Grade Classes. I read aloud a book about looking out for litter and listened to their ideas on how they can keep their campus litter free starting with being “litter getters” on the playground during recess. I look forward to following their journey with PALS.
The Student Government of Grand Bay Middle School invited me to help kick off their clean campus program as they prepared for the first clean-up of the year. After my presentation they worked on posters to get their student body excited about cleaning up their campus. Great leadership skills are being developed and put to great use for their campus and community.
We had many great entries in the Poster and Recycled Art Contests. I was able to participate in a variety of Earth Day events this year at schools and at the Montgomery Zoo. PALS was also invited to be a part of Pike County and Tallapoosa County Water Festivals for fourth graders. With so many schools participating in so many events that provide education and beautification opportunities, we believe that the Alabama PALS mission statement is alive and well! We see it every day… “Alabama Communities Working Together for a Cleaner and More Beautiful Alabama.”
As you prepare for the 2025-2026 school year, please join the Clean Campus Program. If you are interested in scheduling a visit or have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at (334) 263-7737 or via email at [email protected]. All Alabama PALS programs are offered to schools free of charge, thanks to our invaluable state partnerships and corporate sponsors. Together, let’s continue fostering a culture of environmental stewardship across Alabama. Here’s to a cleaner, brighter future!
Stapleton School
Stapleton School is a quaint little school in Baldwin County—the 2nd smallest elementary school in the county, as a matter of fact. To ride past us, you wouldn’t think there’s a lot going on, but you’d be wrong. Nestled in gorgeous old oak trees on a slightly hilly terrain, there are parts of our campus that resemble a scene in a painting. We have a small stream that turns into a babbling brook during the wetter times of the year. There are croaking frogs, singing birds, and many other creatures taking advantage of this tiny, hidden gem. The inspiration behind Stapleton School being an environmentally minded school is evident.
Teaching children life lessons goes right in hand with teaching the AL standards. It’s the simple things: work together, clean up after yourself, get along with others, etc. At Stapleton, we have integrated those simple ideas into the nature aspect of things: working together to make our school environmentally friendly, keeping our campus clean, and getting along with others—creatures, that is.
Using grants received from Gulf Coast RC&D, our local education supporter, NBCEE, along with various donations from local businesses, we started transforming our school. When I say “we”, I’m talking about students, parents, school staff, Master Gardeners, local church members, etc.! It started with a butterfly garden filled with native plants and transitioned into working with Alabama Wildlife Federation to expand into a full-scale, certified Outdoor Classroom. Our stations include a frog pond and bog, a songbird garden, a pollinator garden, and a recently added dry creek bed and pitcher plant bog. All of these stations, as well as others, are in the heart of our school—easily accessible and viewed daily by all. The children named the resident frog in the pond “Timmy,” noticed chickadees raising a clutch in one of our birdhouses, and find all sorts of caterpillars, butterflies, and other interesting insects.
While greenhouses aren’t typically something you see at elementary schools, we’ve got an awesome one! Our principal, Jim Perry, secured a grant to fund an incredible greenhouse with all the bells and whistles. We’ve worked with Alabama Cooperative Extension System and Master Gardeners to help teachers learn about planting and gardening which in turn gets taught to the students. Our students recently transplanted seedlings grown in the greenhouse and used the plants as Mother’s Day gifts. Students and teachers alike are learning! We are excited about all of the teaching and learning possibilities the greenhouse can offer!
Each class at our school is tasked with taking on a volunteer-type project. Some classes collect donations for various local needs—firefighters, animal shelters, hospitals, etc. My class has always chosen to be “Habitat Heroes.” A few years back, we joined the AL PALS’ Adopt-a-Stream program, and we annually sign up for AL PALS’ Clean Campus program. My class routinely takes campus walks to clean up trash and keep it out of our stream. We sometimes get side-tracked by all the cool creatures and plants we find, but that’s quite all right with me! Students have learned to leave the wildlife where they find it and that the animals depend on us to keep their homes clean.
We also started a recycling program several years ago. We earned points by reporting recycling and were able to “buy” recycling cans to place around campus. The students are pretty good about recycling things when possible, and our custodian graciously takes the bags to a recycling station at the local fire station. We’ve also added water bottle refilling stations to cut down on all the plastic waste.
Life lessons truly go along with everything AL PALS is promoting. If we work together, we can make Alabama enjoyable for all. Cleaning up after ourselves doesn’t always come naturally. We must set the example and teach others that our decisions have an effect on the world around us. Alabama is ranked 4th place for having the most biodiversity in the United States. We lead the country in having the most species of turtles, crayfish, pitcher plants and freshwater fish, snails, and mussels. These creatures truly are dependent on getting along with us for their survival. Let’s do our best to keep the title, “Alabama, the Beautiful,” and remember, Don’t Drop it on Alabama!
Clean Campus Gallery
