A Green Welcome Back to School!

How will you Reduce, Reuse and Recycle this school year? The Green Team has some ideas!

First of all, a great way to reduce waste in the school cafeteria is to pack your child’s lunch using reusable containers. You can find these in many of our local stores or online. The list below has some great sites for these kinds of products.

www.resnackit.com - You can find snack bags, sandwich bags, hoagie bags, and other great ways to pack your kids lunches.

www.laptoplunches.com - It has eco-friendly lunch boxes that contain NO phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), or lead. It also has great ideas for packing healthy lunches.

www.kleankanteen.com - It offers safe alternative to plastic or lined aluminum bottles. It also offers an insulated bottle that does triple duty as a mug, a thermos and a food container. Insulated Kanteens® keep contents hot for up to 6 hours, while iced drinks stay frosty cold for more than 24 hrs.

The Green Team is very excited to help support the school’s new Engineering and Science Lab and together find ways to reuse everyday materials. We hope you will too, by collecting these materials at home and sending them to school on the weekly collection days. The following list indicates some of the items that will be collected.

plastic jugs buttons

plastic lids spools

water bottles craft sticks

yogurt or cottage cheese containers clothespins

vitamin containers corks

empty film canisters beads

berry baskets string

butter tubs and lids thread

oatmeal containers

egg cartons

heavy duty paper plates

laughing cow-cheese containers

The Green Team will continue to host Recycling Bonanzas in November and April, when we collect items such as empty glue sticks and Scotch tape dispensers. Last year we collected thousands of glue sticks and sent them to a company called TerraCycle. TerraCycle convert the collect waste into a wide variety of products and materials. We receive points for the items we send in and then can make donations to different charities. We accumulated enough points that we were able to make the following donations.

• Planting 4 trees in an American forest

• Adopting one acre of wildlife

• Giving clean water to two people for a year

We hope you will help us continue to make a difference by helping us collect these items for our Bonanzas!

Earth Hour

On March 26, 2011 at 8:30 pm cities, towns and municipalities across the world will turn off their lights for one hour. It is call Earth Hour. Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when over two million individuals and thousands of businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. It has continued to grow each year. Last year, Earth Hour 2010 became the biggest Earth Hour ever. A record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action. Notable buildings and landmarks from all over the world switched off. People across the globe turned off their lights.

The purpose of Earth Hour is to send a world wide message that it is possible to take action on global warming. You can participate too! Visit the Earth Hour Website for more information. When you visit the website click on the light bulb to register your family household to participate.

Earth Hour is sponsored by WWF , the world’s leading conservation organization.

You Can Recycle That?

Bettie Weaver Elementary held another Recycling Roundup this past fall and we were very happy with the number of items that were brought in to be recycled and saved from being placed in landfills, so thank you to all that participated in this earth-friendly cause. BWE collects cell phones, digital cameras, printer cartridges, plastic grocery bags, yogurt cups, glue sticks, bottle caps, tape dispensers and tape cores. All of these are either taken to stores that recycle them, sent to recycling programs or used by the school's art teacher for projects. With the success of the Recycling Roundup, we wanted to make you aware of more more items that can be recycled: #5 plastics - which includes yogurt cups, cream cheese, margarine, and sour cream containers can all be recycled. Whole Foods Grocery in Short Pump collects the #5 plastics, which we cannot place in our curbside recycling. Whole Foods uses them to make toothbrushes and razors. So please remember to clean them and save them to bring to Whole Foods the next time you shop there. And if you don’t shop at Whole Foods, you can send in to the next Recycling Roundup at BWE. We also wanted to make you aware that Lowe's Home Improvement has added new recycling containers inside their store located at the West Koger Center. You can now bring your rechargeable batteries and energy efficient light bulbs to Lowe's for recycling. Batteries and energy efficient light bulbs contain mercury and should not be placed in the regular trash. As more of our light bulbs get replaced with these energy efficient bulbs it is nice to know you can bring your old ones to Lowe's anytime, instead of waiting once a year for Chesterfield County's special recycling days. Lastly, one other item which can be recycled, if you are not aware, is pet's fur. Don’t laugh, donated pet fur was recycled and used as clean up material for Gulf Coast Oil Spill. Ask your dog groomer next time if they recycle the fur! Or if you groom your pets yourself and need ideas on how to fur-recycle check out this website.www.ecosalon.com/how-to-make-pet-hair-work-for-you-not-against-you/