Dear Friends of Hampden,

We have been researching environmental issues, specifically air pollution, and we believe
that there are things that your organization can do to help us clean the air in our school to help
our students breathe healthier and focus on learning.
First, we’d like to provide you with some background about air pollution and air quality.
Humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. For us to have fresh oxygen to
provide energy to all of our vital organs, plants are necessary to filter out the carbon dioxide (and
other dangerous chemicals) and give us that fresh oxygen. Did you know that polluted air can
cause students with asthma to have trouble breathing? It can also cause people to have an
ongoing cough and throat irritation? And in serious cases, it can cause cancer or permanent
damage to our bodies?
As much as we love our outdoor classroom and spending learning time outside, we still
spend most of our school days inside. So, we need to make sure that our indoor air is clean and
providing oxygen for our brains to work as best they can. In our research on how to clean indoor
air, we learned that it is possible to create a green wall. This is basically a wall of plants that are
“planted” in special planters attached to the wall with a special water system to keep them
hydrated. We know from science class that plants also need sunlight to perform photosynthesis,
so there will also have to be a special light that mimics sunlight for the plants to grow.
Of course we love Hampden, but we know that our building is old and that there are lots
of things in the air that may not be the best for us to be breathing. Based on our calculations,
each person in our building breathes approximately 840 gallons of oxygen each school day. One
green wall can produce about 200,000 gallons of fresh oxygen each day. That means that we
would need approximately three green walls in the building to make sure that all our students and
staff members have fresh oxygen to breathe.
We hope that you will invest in a green wall for our school to provide more fresh oxygen
for the students and staff to breathe. Our teachers are always telling us that we must put forth
our best effort, but we also need to have oxygenated blood for our brains for us to do our best
thinking. We feel like we have really been holding up our end of the deal and putting forth our
best effort, so now we are asking you to provide us with the best oxygen to fuel our bodies.
We hope that this information and our presentations will convince you to invest in green
walls at Hampden. Not only are they beautiful and make our hallways look better, but they have
a positive impact on all students and staff members!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Kroger’s GAL class