Photo by Savannah Rhudy
In less than one year, Riverside’s Cool Earth Club has helped clean up the local community and raised money for environmental projects all over the world.
Founded by senior Timothy Arthur in February of 2026, Cool Earth Club focuses on improving the environment in the local and global community. The club focuses on doing local trash pick ups twice a week and organizes fundraisers that raise money for the Cool Earth Organization. Founded in 2007 by conservationist Johan Eliasch and British politician Frank Field. The Cool Earth Organization focuses on preserving rainforests, specifically in indigenous areas.
‘It’s not like your typical sit down, talk around the table,’’ said Cool Earth Club co-leader Evett Rhudy. “You’re getting out into the community and you’ll be picking up trash and talking about big events that we want to do as we’re cleaning up parks.”
Cool Earth Club has picked up over 2,200 pounds of trash around Durham. The club’s 54 volunteers have logged over 327 service hours since February.
“We’ll post a location and date and time the day before, and you come in the morning and we just start picking up trash,” said Zakariyya El-Genk, Co founder of the club. “We try to have fun with it.”
Cool Earth Club is also a completely student-led organization that does not receive any school resources. Relying entirely on student power and no school resources, the club uses social media and word of mouth to share information.
“Our main way we promote our club is through word of mouth, but besides that it’s all promoted on instagram,” said El-Genk. “Instagram is the primary way people find out when pickups are. We tag everyone who shows up and how many pounds of trash got picked up.”
“We never meet in school,” said El-Genk. “All of their meetings are outside of school and focus purely on action, not discussion.”
Students interested in participating in a trash pickup can find dates and locations @rhs_coolearthclub.
