Every year, more schools across the country are doing their part to protect Mother Earth by practicing green initiatives that conserve energy, cut their carbon dioxide footprints and promote environmental awareness.

Public and private schools across Miami-Dade County are following suit.

Environmental studies are also being worked into the curriculum of several schools, including three new ones opening in the fall: a K-8 center in Homestead, a high school in North Miami and another high school in Kendall, which will be the first LEED-certified school in Miami-Dade, meaning the school meets the national standards for green construction.

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The schools provide students and their families a means to exchange incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly CFLs. Students sign pledges vowing to replace their old bulbs with CFLs, supplied by Southern California Edison, and document the wattage of the bulbs they replaced. Bulbs were exchanged at school, during PTO events, parent events, and other school-community activities.

The program set a goal for the 2006-2007 school year: to replace 4,000 bulbs in the homes of district families, but that goal was too conservative. The program replaced over 8,000 bulbs in the fall semester alone. In fact, the program has been so successful that twenty more schools were added for the second semester, and the program expects to easily make their three-year goal of replacing 12,000 bulbs in less than a year.

Think of it this way: in just these nine schools, students have already saved their families a collective $40,000 in energy costs, and about three million kWh over the life of the bulbs. The program anticipates a one-year savings of over $700,000 for student families.