Green Club News

As some of you know, I volunteer for my son's elementary school's green club. It has been a very rewarding experiencing working with like minded parents and teachers to encourage sustainable practices at our school. The thing that I'm most excited about is the blog I created. I feel it has great potential for dispensing information to students, teachers, and parents alike. It's been challenging getting the word out and getting people to participate. I think that most people aren't use to the blog interface and the concept of blogging in general. But the green club is just new this year, and I can't expect too much so soon.

Here are some great things we've been able to accomplish so far this year:

1. We've started a battery recycling program. So far, we've recycled over 100 pounds of batteries that would otherwise be polluting our landfills.
2. Some other things we're recycling are Elmer's glue sticks, printer cartridges, and paper in the classroom.
3. We had a "Commit to Recycling Drive" and asked families to sign a pledge to commit to recycling at home. Over 250 families have committed this year.
4. Speaking of recycling, we just introduced a recyling program in our cafeteria. We now have recycling bins for cans, bottles, and juice pouches. There's a lot more potential for waste reduction in the cafeteria that we're continuing to work on.
5. For Earth Day, we're going to have a magazine recyle drive. People will bring in used magazines, and we will reuse them and distribute them to senior citizen homes and other similar places. During Earth Week, the kids will announce a "Tip of the Day" during the morning announcements. We're selling t-shirts for the kids to wear on Earth Day. It will also act as our very first fund raiser. We will make $1 for every shirt sold. To round things out, the kids will have a poster contest and will watch The Lorax movie.
6. Looking to the future, our pie-in-the-sky is to conduct an energy audit of the school. The school is about 20 years old and is ripe for enery conservation. It will be easy to identify things that can be done to save energy. It will be much more difficult to get the school and the school district to cooperate and actual complete these measures.