Tuesday, September 6, 2011

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!