LENOX, Mass. — Lenox Memorial High School students want to plant 100 trees as a way to replace one million sheets of paper.

 

And they're looking for help from the community to purchase the saplings and plant them on April 24.  

 

"Basically we're trying to offset our school's paper usage by getting people to buy trees and then getting volunteers to come with us to go plant them in their homes," said student Sabrina Lewis. "I'm really excited, but also, we do need people to buy more trees."

 

Community members can buy an 18 inch to 24 inch red maple or river birch sapling for $5, which includes delivery and COVID-19 safe planting. 

 

The goal is to replace the estimated million sheets of paper that the school uses each year. Students have already sold around 21 trees.

 

This event was organized by the school's Climate Crisis Control Club in partnership with Massachusetts non-profit organization Tree-Plenish, which began as a senior project in Mansfield and now reaches around 20 states. The student-led nonprofit says it's on target to plant 14,000 trees through partnerships with 90 schools. 

 

The club was started by Lewis and classmate Medeja Rudzinskaite last year and currently has around 13 members.

    

"Even though we're remote now and we use less trees, we're still trying to offset our usage from previous years," Rudzinskaite said.

 

Tree-Plenish reached out to Grade 9 world literature teacher Scott Wade at the beginning of the school year and the club was happy to partner with it.

 

Wade explained that the club is also planning an Earth Day cleanup to beautify local spaces and have a few other projects in the works. Earth Day is on Thursday, April 22.

 

He said this project has also made him realize that many class handouts could be replaced with a Google document or other virtual rendering.