Photo courtesy of Rahul Karthik
Rahul Karthik, second from left, with members of Green Earth Society after a Cahaba River clean-up day.
Rahul Karthik knew there was a vacuum at Spain Park High School. Coming out of the pandemic, his high school no longer had its environmental club, the Walden Society.
Karthik, then a sophomore and now a senior, wanted a club for students who were interested in environmental issues, after he volunteered with YouthServe and saw pollution along the Cahaba River.
Karthik knew someone at the school who had created their own club and used that as inspiration to get started.
“So I knew it was possible that if students had the initiative, that they could go to the administration and request to start a club, and for that, you needed a minimum of 10 students to show interest,” he said. “So that’s when I kind of went around, asked my friends and asked others ... if people are interested.”
With the administration’s approval, The Green Earth Society was born.
“I had two major goals,” Karthik said. “The first one was I wanted to get youth involved in community service and show that even at their age, they can get engaged in the community. […] And secondly, through the club, I wanted to get one step closer into making Alabama a cleaner and greener state through the activities and events that we conduct.”
The club is part environmental issues and part environmental sciences, focusing on cleaning up the local environment, removing invasive plant species and conducting water testing.
Karthik has seen resounding success with the club in its two years of existence. Partnering with the Cahaba River Society and Cahaba Riverkeepers, the Green Earth Society has cleaned up one ton of trash from around five cities in the metro area and removed 500 pounds of invasive plant species from Hoover.
“The reason we want to incorporate invasive species is because they don’t have predators, so they naturally take the resources away from the natural species that grow in Alabama, and that causes them to die out, and it results in a lack of biodiversity, and which also, at the end of the day, hinders the ecosystem of the Cahaba River,” Karthik said.
The club has also become popular at school. Karthik said the group has 100 members, 40 of whom are continuously active in all of the meetings and clean-ups.
“I’m definitely happy that I was able to have this opportunity at school where I can start my own club and get other youth involved,” Karthik said. “Being able to do what I enjoy and actually convert some of my ideas into real action is, I think, a great thing.”
