Harbor City International School earns GreenStep award for sustainability efforts

Harbor City International School earned a GreenStep award for its work in environmental education and community wellness, a recognition that came as students filled The Depot’s Great Hall with a second annual Sustainability Summit in downtown Duluth.

The free community event ran from 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, April 10, at the Duluth Depot, where Harbor City’s Action Club Team, also identified as Harbor City Youth in Action and Climate Action, organized tables, hands-on activities and partner displays around sustainable living. The school’s GreenStep honor put a formal label on a school culture that has leaned into student-led climate action, but the summit itself showed how that work plays out in public: through repair, reuse and local organizing rather than a classroom pledge.

The focus this year was sustainable fashion. Students set up clothing swap stations and clothing repair stations, framing fast fashion as a waste problem that can be challenged by keeping clothes in circulation longer. The summit also included a student-led community art project and other interactive learning opportunities, giving families and visitors a chance to move from talk to participation.

Several organizations joined the effort, including Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, the UMD Environmental Club, Adopt-A-Drain and Get the Lead Out. Whole Food Co-op donated food and snacks for the event, helping make the gathering free and open to the community. That mix of partners gave the summit a broader reach than a school function, connecting Harbor City to campus groups, environmental programs and neighborhood-oriented advocates across Duluth.

Harbor City International School, a tuition-free public charter high school in downtown Duluth, has built its sustainability work around hands-on environmental education and community engagement. The GreenStep award signals that those efforts are being noticed, but the deeper test is whether they change daily habits outside the Great Hall. In this case, the most concrete outcome was not ceremony. It was a room full of students, families and local organizations showing that sustainability can look like a repaired jacket, a swapped shirt and a school that treats climate action as part of public education.