Today students walked, biked, carpooled, roller bladed, or took the bus to participate in the Eco Smack-Down.  The Eco Smack-Down is an event created by the Louisville Youth Advisory Board. Its objective is to have students walk, bike, carpool, roller blade, or take the bus to reduce the amount of cars in the school parking lot. By doing this they raised  awareness of an environmental issue that is impacting the world.

This year, the only two schools are participating in the Eco Smack-Down these schools are Fairview and Monarch. With a little friendly competition, Monarch and Fairview went head to head to see who could get the least amount of cars in their parking lot.

With incentivising kids to compete with their school rival the Eco Smack-Down raised awareness of the issue of driving to school and help the environment.

“The goal is for students and staff at both Monarch and Fairview to walk, bike, carpool, or take the bus to school on April 15th as a friendly competition. Whichever school decreases down the number of cars in their parking lots by the highest percentage on this day will be deemed the winning school,” said Joi Wu, who is senior at Monarch and on the Youth Advisory Board who helped plan this event.

Students got the chance to win prizes and compete with Fairview while saving the environment.

“I think students will enjoy participating in a friendly competition with Fairview in order to help the environment as well as have a chance to win some cool raffle prices,” said Eliza Miller, who is also a senior at Monarch and on the Youth Advisory Board.

Terren Fox and Jacob Oligschlaeger did a little bit of math to find out just what monarch uses to drive to school. They estimated that the average student drives 6 total miles to and from school each day and has an MPG of 20. They also found that as a school we spend $3,268.08/week alone on gas to get to and from school. This means that over the course of a school year we will spend $117,650.88 on gas solely for the reason of driving to school.

The final results of the Eco Smack-Down are that Monarch with 602 cars decreased to 563. Fairview 502 cars decreased to 485. Monarch decreased their car count by 6.48% and Fairview decreased their count by 3.39%.

Though these percentages might be small, in the long run they help. Also, students now have raised awareness of this pressing issue of our generation. With more Eco Smack-Downs in the next few years students could get better and better at reducing their ecological footprint.