Electric School Buses: One Way to Save Our Planet
April 22, 1970 marked the first Earth Day ever celebrated in the United States. To date, more than 1 billion participants nationwide continue this celebration of Earth Month through unique ways and sustainable practices that help protect our planet – this includes all of us at Highland and our mission to make electric school buses affordable and accessible to communities everywhere.
School buses are one of the largest sources of transportation in the US. Here are a few ways deploying electric school buses helps our planet and protects communities.
#1 – Electric school buses reduce carbon emissions.
According to the Environmental Defense Fund, “the average greenhouse emissions from fossil-fuel-powered school buses are 363 tons compared to electric school buses’s 116 tons over the lifecycle.” With nearly 500k school buses transporting students daily, the reduction of carbon emissions through electric buses would be monumental.
#2 – Electric school buses reduce asthma and other respiratory and health issues among children.
Pediatric asthma is the leading cause of student absenteeism and the number one cause of pediatric emergency room visits. In the American Lung Association’s recent analysis report, it was found that throughout 2050, “nearly 3 million pediatric asthma attacks and millions of other health impacts on people up to 18 years of age,” could potentially be avoided over the coming decades with the use of electric school buses.
#3 – Electric school buses help protect the health of our school bus drivers.
Students aren’t the only beneficiaries of electric school buses, the drivers are as well. A quieter bus provides a more positive work environment for drivers but more importantly, it eliminates the toxic fumes they breathe in daily. Bus drivers in Bethlehem Pennsylvania schools are already witnessing the benefits. “You would drive to the yard in the morning and it looked like a mushroom cloud…that was the carbon burning inefficiently through the diesel engines. You could actually climb in your bus and you could taste the taste of diesel in your mouth because it was that thick in the air,” expressed school bus driver Lesa Buttillo from Bethlehem Area School District in Pennsylvania.
Protecting the planet and our communities can be accomplished in a variety of ways, and school bus electrification continues to prove that it is an impactful channel in doing so.
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