Grade 10 students at Guildford High School in Surrey with support from the Your U-turn Program formed a Surrey Idle Free Team, bringing awareness to Guildford High about the effects of vehicle idling at school and in the community.
In co-operation with the Youth Climate Leadership Alliance (former BC Anti-Idling Ambassadors), the students and the staff at Your U-turn embarked on a weeklong campaign May 29th – June 5 that took place before and after school and in conjunction with Clean Air Day on June 3rd. As part of the campaign students created signs and approached drivers with Mythbuster fact sheets, Idle Free window decals and key chains. Drivers were asked to put the decals on their windows as a sign of support for an Idle Free Surrey.
The school community was quite receptive to the message, with many not knowing that vehicles use more fuel idling for longer than 10 seconds than it would take to just shut-off and restart the engine.
The students showed great initiative in educating their school community about unnecessary idling and were excited to be the first school in Surrey to form a team and gather commitments in the community to stop idling.
