Meridian High School Drives Climate Action with GetGreen
In its second year of implementation, GetGreen at Meridian High School has evolved from a pilot initiative into a cornerstone of the school's award-winning sustainability culture.
Executive Summary
Led by Tosin Adetoro, the 2024 FCCPS Teacher of the Year, the program at Meridian High School in Falls Church City, VA utilizes a dual-platform approach — specialized desktop access for classroom integration and a mobile app for home use — to bridge the gap between environmental education and daily habit formation.
The Challenge: Turning Awareness into Action
Along with Meridian High School's LEED Gold certified facility and advanced curriculum, student leaders and teachers wanted a fun way to learn more about climate science and practicing sustainable behaviors in the cafeteria and at home. The school needed a way to gamify participation and track the tangible impact of student efforts.
The Solution: A Hybrid GetGreen Experience
Meridian deployed a customized version of the GetGreen platform specifically tailored for the Falls Church City Public Schools (FCCPS) environment.
- Classroom Integration: Students use a dedicated desktop version of GetGreen during classroom lessons on sustainability and renewable energy, allowing for deep dives into the data behind their actions.
- Mobile Engagement: The GetGreen mobile app extends the program beyond school walls, encouraging students to log green actions at home — from reducing water usage to biking to school and choosing plant-based meals.
- Localized Challenges: Custom challenges were created for school-specific initiatives, most notably the "Better at the Bin" waste sorting program.
Better at the Bin: A Success Story
Meridian High School launched a Better at the Bin program in Spring 2025 in which students used the GetGreen app to:
- Learn: About what materials are compostable vs. recyclable.
- Act: Log their daily successful sorting at the cafeteria stations.
- Compete: Earn "Green Leaves" (app credits) driving a friendly competition that significantly reduced cafeteria waste contamination.
Key Results & Impact
Total partnership to-date: 2025–2026
| Metric | Achievement |
|---|---|
| Active Student Users | 300+ Students |
| Total Actions Logged | 3,000+ Actions |
| Primary Initiative | Better at the Bin (Cafeteria Composting/Sorting) |
| Engagement Milestone | Featured Presentation at FCCPS School Board Meeting |
"GetGreen has been a game-changer for student engagement. It's one thing to talk about sustainability in a physics lab; it's another to see hundreds of students actively competing to lower our school's footprint. The app makes the invisible impact of their choices visible and rewarding."
— Tosin Adetoro, Sustainability Coordinator, Meridian High School
GetGreen in Action at Meridian
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