Planting a Step Towards a Better Environment

On January 28th 2025 the Riverdale Interact Club, National Honors Society, and Earth Science Students took a field trip to go wrap trees with Living Lands and Waters. The students left around 8:30 and arrived at The Rust Belt in East Moline to wrap trees. Ms. Bugos has helped organize this event for years, usually the tree wrapping is held in the Riverdale High School gym but this year it was moved to a new location.

 Each tree gets its roots wrapped in newspaper, then it is dipped and water and squeezed out, finally it is bagged up, tied and the Living Lands and Water staff organizes the trees and sends them off to a new home. The students wrapped White Swamp Oak trees which can live up to 200 years and provide a food source and shelter for native animals. This field trip was a great opportunity to get volunteer hours and have fun helping the environment. 

Junior Katie Cox says, “It was fulfilling to see how much of a difference we could make in a short amount of time. It’s hard to put into perspective how many trees our group of students wrapped. It’s nice to think that one day we might see a tree that we wrapped.” All together the students wrapped 5,183 trees!

By: Caitlin Mumma