When education issues make headlines in Los Angeles, the subject’s often bad nutrition and obesity at best and deleterious budget cuts at worst. So visiting Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale, Calif., is like stepping into an unexpectedly healthy green oasis — with organic fruit trees, compost bins for food waste and a healthier vending machine with lots of organic options!

ECHS has an eco-curriculum of environmental education and activism called Green Ambassadors — and signs of this green-minded thinking can be seen all over the small campus. Students can eat their lunch on benches designed into drought-resistant gardens — or by a seasonal stream that doubles as a natural flood deterrent that recharges the local aquifer — or on the recycled concrete seats of an outdoor amphitheater. Post-meal, students throw what can’t be recycled or composted into bins appropriately-labeled “Landfill.”

Sundance Channel viewers may have seen the Green Ambassadors in action on a “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” episode a couple years ago. Students working on an “Rise Above Plastics” program built boats out of discarded plastics and floated them down Ballona Creek!

Environmental Charter High School’s open to all high school students in L.A. County. Want to find a similar school in your neighborhood? Visit Green Charter Schools, an organization that supports the “establishment, enhancement and advancement of charter schools with environment-focused educational programs and practices,” for a list of like-minded green schools.

Photos: Siel