Reducing Paper Towel Consumption

Woolridge Elementary School orders 30 cases of paper towels per month, and each case costs $16.66.  That equates to nearly $5,000 a year spent on paper towels.  That's 1,200,000 paper towels that are thrown in the trash each year!

I felt it was important to reduce the number of paper towels used at our school for a number of reasons.  First of all, it's important to conserve our trees, which are an important natural resource.  It takes a lot of energy to create paper towels, and creates a lot of pollution too.  Paper towels are a problem on the other end too as they end up in our landfills.  But another reason to reduce our paper towel consumption is to save money.  These stickers have been proven to reduce paper towel consumption by 15%.  Some schools have reported a 30% reduction in consumption.  In the case of Woolridge, a 15% reduction amounts to an annual savings of about $750!  Multiple that out across the 60+ schools in our school district, and you're talking about tens of thousands of dollars - all because of simple little sticker that reminds people that "these come from trees". 

During Earth Week, Woolridge students placed "These Come From Trees" stickers on the paper towel dispensers located in the various classrooms and bathrooms in the school.  They were generously provided to us free of charge by Pete Kazanjy.  He's a product manager/designer living in the Silicon Valley, and this is a fun side project that he hopes can do some good.  Click HERE to read about how the idea of "These Come From Trees" stickers was born.

So be on the lookout for these stickers the next time you're visiting Woolridge Elementary School.  Remember to take only what you really need.  I bet you'll find that you only really need one or two paper towels to dry your hands instead of a a big giant handful.  You'll be saving the trees as well as saving our school district some money.

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Jonathan the Juggler Teaches Woolridge to "Go Green"

Jonathan the Juggler visited Woolridge Elementary School earlier this week to teach students about recycling and protecting our environment.

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Earth Day - 2010

April will be a busy month at Woolridge Elementary School. The Woolridge Elementary School Green Club is sponsoring numerous activities to help celebrate Earth Day all month long.

MIXED MEDIA CONTEST

Students of all ages are encouraged to submit a drawing, photo, or essay about a green topic of their choice. Here are some possible ideas:

• Write an essay about why it’s important to recycle.

• Take a photograph of local wildlife or habitat.
• Create an art project using recycled materials.

• Create a comic strip.

Students can submit as many entries as they want.  They can submit their entries to their teacher, or they can e-mail their entries to gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com.  Entries must be submitted by Friday, April 23, 2010.  All entries will be displayed on the Woolridge Elementary School Green Club blog. A panel of teachers and parents will recognize several of the best entries, and winning entries will be posted in the cafeteria for everyone to see.

1ST ANNUAL RECYCLING BONANZA

Just in time for spring cleaning, the Woolridge Elementary School Green Club will be holding its first annual Recycling Bonanza. The event will take place from April 5 through April 30.  We will be collecting the items listed below so that they can be reused or recycled. You can send in items with your child or feel free to stop by the school yourself. Collection bins will be located in the front lobby of the school. Read on and see how you can participate and help out.  Send us an e-mail at gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com if you have any questions about the Recycling Bonanza.

Small Electronics

Electronic waste accounts for 70 percent of the overall toxic waste currently found in landfills, according to Global Futures Foundation. In addition to valuable metals like aluminum, electronics often contain hazardous materials such as mercury. When placed in a landfill, even in small doses, these materials can contaminate soil as well as drinking water.  Click HERE to learn more about the dangerous materials often found in electronics.  The Woolridge Elementary School Green Club is participating in Recycle Forward, an innovative program that recycles used technology to raise money for new technology for schools, and is asking community members for help.

The following is a list of acceptable items:

• Cell phones
• Laptops
• PDAs
• MP3 players
• Digital cameras
• GPS systems
• Video games and consoles
• DVDs
• Calculators

The following is a list of non-acceptable items:

• Computer hard drives
• Monitors
• Computer accessories
• Televisions

Hair and Nylon Stockings

Your next hair cut can be a life saver!  Matter of Trust is an ecological public 501 c 3 charity established in 1998.  Thousands of hair salons and individuals throughout the US and abroad send Matter of Trust their hair clippings.  The hair clippings are shipped to specific US manufacturers who weave them into mats that can soak up oil and clean our beaches and harbours.  Last year, over 2,600 oil spills occurred in the world. They weren't all are high profile, but most had an impact on the environment.

Click HERE to see the hair mats in action.

Recycled hair clippings are also made into hair "booms" which are sausage shaped.  Hair is stuffed into recycled nylons (with mesh to provide a strong exterior).  These booms are then tied together and used to encircle and contain oil spills to keep oil from spreading.

So bring a plastic bag (preferably an old plastic grocery bag so the bag can be recycled) to your next hair cut and ask your barber/stylist to sweep up your cut hair.  Ask the hair salon for any other hair clippings they have laying around while you're at it.  Bring your hair clippings and depost them in the appropriate bin in the school's front lobby.

Don't throw out those nylon stocking if they get a run in them.  Bring them to our Recycling Bonanza, place them in the appropriate bin, and help clean up oil spills and protect marine life.

Pet Supplies

If your pet is anything like mine, you've bought your pet some toys that they never bothered to play with. Those toys typically are sitting in the back of the coat closet or in the top shelf of the pantry. Gather up those gently/never been used toys and other pet supplies such as collars and leashes (no food please) and place them in the appropriate collection bin located in the school's front lobby. All collected pet toys and supplies will be donated to the Richmond SPCA.

Eye Glasses

More than 250 million adults and children worldwide suffer from poor vision because they don't have access to eye exams and eyeglasses. We will be collecting used eye glasses and donating them to LensCrafters so the glasses can go to those in need.

Sports Uniforms
Many of our kids have sports uniforms that they've used for one season and have since outgrown.  Donated sport uniforms will be sent to disadvantaged children in the Phillipines.  Please make sure uniforms are in decent condition and have been washed prior to donating them.

Stuffed Animals
We are collecting small stuffed animals (less than 8", such as a Beanie Baby) to donate to soldiers in Afghanistan.  The soldiers love to give the animals to the local children, and the small size makes them easy to carry.

BUT WAIT!!!  THERE'S MORE!!!

Earth Day
Wear a green shirt on Earth Day to show your support

Book Buddies Clean Up
Fifth grade and Kindergarten book buddies will (weather permitting) spend their time cleaning up the grounds around Woolridge Elementary School. Please make sure your children are dressed appropriately.

Batteries

Did you know that Woolridge Elementary School has a battery recycling program? All kinds of batteries are collected throughout the school year in the main office. Please continue to bring in all of the other types of batteries noted below.

• Household batteries, both rechargeable and non-rechargeable, such as: D-cell, C-cell, AA, AAA, 9-volt, and button cells
• Rechargeable battery packs from: Cell phones, cameras, laptop computers, power tools, etc.
• Handheld electronics: Cell phones, iPods, PDAs, pagers, and so on.
• Any other dry-cell batteries.

What types of batteries will NOT be accepted?

• Lead acid batteries from: Automobile, motorcycle, boats, and outdoor power equipment
• Any other wet-cell batteries

“These Come From Trees”

A single "These Come From Trees" sticker can save around a tree's worth of paper, every year. Hundreds of schools across the country have participated in this program with great success. Many schools have reported up to a 30% reduction in paper towel usage! These stickers will save Woolridge Elementary School over $1,000 over the course of the school year. Our students will place “These Come From Trees” stickers on paper towel dispensers throughout the school, and the Green Club will track our paper towel consumption. Be on the lookout for them and remember to use paper towels wisely.

Neighborhood Cleanup
Everyone is encourage to walk through their neighborhood during Earth Week (April 18 - 24) and pick up litter in their neighborhood.  Send in pictures of you and your child(ren) picking up litter and we will include your picture on our blog!  Just send pictures to gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com.

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Dumpster Diving - The Results!

We had a great time at our first green club meeting of 2009 learning how to green our lunch. The kids learned how NOT to pack a lunch from Wendy Wasteful and how to pack a lunch from Go Green George. Then we talked about how 16 bags per day (almost 3,000 bags per year) of cafeteria trash are landfilled from our school alone! We talked about how to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We went outside and looked through a bag of cafeteria trash and found lots and lots of trays, some recyclables, chip bags, milk cartons and some untouched food. We talked about how we could reuse the black trays, how to get the kids to recycle better inside the lunchroom, what to do with those chip bags and if we could ever use washable trays again.

I still would like to see us try and use washable trays for one day (maybe during Earth Day). Don't you think the kids should experience a nostalgic moment like taking their tray to the window? One possibility to make this happen would be for parents volunteers to wash the trays that day.

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Student Activity - Contacting Manufacturers

Recycling and picking up litter is just one piece of the pie to make our planet a greener place to live. It also helps if we purchase products that are manufacturered in an environmentally friendly way. Some manufacturers have been doing this for a long time, others are starting to join them, and still others need a lot of help. One manufacturer that I recently contacted was Crayola.

Crayola makes a lot of great products that students frequently use, and they seem to do a good job making their products in an environmentally friendly way. There are some interesting and fun links on their website describing all of the things they do at the factory to protect the Earth. Click on the following to see how they make markers, crayons, and colored pencils as green as possible.

I always felt bad throwing out markers after they were used up. So I wrote an e-mail to Crayola's customer service department asking if it was possible to recycle the markers by creating a program similar to Elmer's Glue Glue Crew. The following is the response they sent back.

Dear Jay,

Thank you for your recent inquiry. Crayola is constantly striving, through our own marketing and research and development departments, to develop new products, concepts and improve existing ones to meet consumer needs. We recognize that consumers like you are our most valuable assets. By listening to your comments, we can provide the best quality products and services available. Your suggestion to start a program similar to Elmer’s Glue have been recorded with similar ones received from consumers.

Crayola is continually evaluating opportunities to make our products environmentally friendly. All Crayola Markers are made of five components, which include a water based color solution, a porous plastic nib, a plastic barrel, a cotton filament and a cap. The plastic components are made of polypropylene plastic. During production, we reuse plastic left from molding processes. Since Crayola Markers are tightly assembled for safety and quality purposes, it is generally not practical to attempt to recycle them.

We appreciate your contact. If additional assistance is needed, you may reach us by telephone at (800) 272-9652 weekdays between 9 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time or e-mail by visiting Crayola.com. Best wishes for a colorful future!


Colorfully yours,

Jo Ellen Raub

Consumer Affairs Lead Representative

CRAYOLA


As you can see, it's not practical to recycle the markers because of the different materials they are made of. But writing Crayola was still a success because it reinforces the fact that more and more customers are asking for environmentally friendly products.

Students - I encourage you to follow my example. Here are some steps to help you out.

1. Think of a product that you use every day.
2. Learn how that product is made.
3. Think about how that product can be made in a more environmentally friendly way.
4. Write an e-mail to the manufacturer with your suggestion. Most manufacturers' websites have a customer service or "Contact Us" link. Make sure you get your parents' permission.
5. Hopefully, you'll get a response back. If so, e-mail the Woolridge Green Club at gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com, forward your original e-mail and the manufacturer's response, and I'll post it on the Woolridge Green Club website.

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Volunteer Sign Up Sheet: Juice Pouch Brigade Cleanup Teams

Woolridge Elementary School participates in TerraCycle's Juice Pouch Brigade Program. The Green Club earns 2 cents for every juice pouch the school ships to TerraCycle (shipping costs are covered by TerraCycle). TerraCycle turns these juice pouches into backpacks and other neat school supplies. To date, we have recycled close to 1,000 juice pouches.

In order to make this program successful, volunteers are needed to rinse out the juice pouches prior to shipment. If you are interested in volunteering, please e-mail Jay Yeman at gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com. Please include your name and the date you wish to volunteer.

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Calling all students!

Don't like all the litter you see on the side of the road?

Want to draw attention to the plight of endangered animals?

Want to share your own green tips?

This is the opportunity to let the whole world know!

The Woolridge Green Club is happy to announce a new activity that's open to students of all ages. The Woolridge Green Club is actively looking for K-5 students interested in contributing content to our website. Students can write articles about environmental issues that are important to them. They can also send in drawings or photos for publication on our website. Here is a sample post from a student at P.B. Smith Elementary School in Warrenton, VA.

Students can e-mail their contributions directly to gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com or deliver hard copies to their teacher at school. Only student's first names will be published to protect their identity. If you are interested, please see Mrs. Pinkston or Mrs. McKissick for more information.

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Trash Teams

The following post was written by Katie M. who is a student at P.B. Smith Elementary School in Warrenton, VA. It serves as an example of the types of posts the Woolridge Elementary School Green Club is interested in receiving from its students. If you're a Woolridge Elementary School student and wish to contribute your own article, e-mail it to gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com. Please include your first name and last initial as well as your teacher's name and grade level. Make sure you get your parents' permission too!



As people drive along our nation's highways, they often throw trash out their car windows. The people do not want to wait until they get to a trashcan, or they do not want to take the time to dispose of their in a proper fashion. The kindest deed I can imagine is to help create a solution to this HUGE problem. It affects a lot of things in the world. Like the world is one thing that people can destroy. Animals are another one because people throw trash and the animals do not know what it is so they eat it. But, while they are eating usually they get ran over by a car. It also affects plants and nature. It affects them by the trash because the food will rot and would go down into the ground. That would get to the roots and die. Remember, plants give us oxygen.

Since, plants give us oxygen, we need to save them or WE die. Which one would you choose? Right, we should save the plants. Something we could LIVE with. Our dogs and cats could be in jeopardy too as well as the plants. By all that trash on the ground its make our world look dirty and unsafe. This world needs to stay alive and well. But, how are we going to do that?

Yes, how are we going to do that? Well, some people like to clean up trash and they are called Trash Teams or the TT. Trash teams are very useful to the earth because they clean up trash. But, they should not do it alone. We should make up a National Clean-up day. Then, EVERYONE will be helping the earth.

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2009 Earth Day Posters

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Open Forum: Energy Audit

One of the more ambitious activities the WES Green Club is hoping to perform is an energy audit of the school. But what is an "energy audit" and how does it work? The purpose of an energy audit is to evaluate the ways the school uses energy (lighting, computers, heating, cooling, etc) and determine how much energy is actually used. This information can then be used to come up with ideas on how to reduce energy consumption and increase energy efficiency.

We would like the student members of the Green Club to play an active role in the energy audit. With some adult supervision, the students can assist in surveying the school and record the number of light fixtures and computers in each room. Using some basic math, the students can estimate how much energy (and $$$) the school is consuming.

The group can then brain storm ideas for ways the school can reduce energy consumption. Students will use their math skills to calculate how much energy (and $$$) can be saved if the school implements any of these measures.

So that's the basic idea of what the Green Club wants to accomplish with the Energy Audit. The survey itself can likely be completed during a single day. Preparation and evaluation of the energy audit will occur on different days. We're looking for input from teachers, parents, and teacher alike to help us make this activity a success. Here are some items that we would like your input on:

• When would be the best time to perform the energy audit survey? Could it be done on a weekend? For how long could the school be made available to us?

• We will need volunteers to assist the students gather information. The students can be broken up into small groups and paired with an adult. Each group can be assigned a portion of the school. Please e-mail the Green Club and let us know if you are interested in volunteering.

• The energy audit will be even more successful if we can interview school staff members to learn about energy usage habits at the school. It might be fun to have the students conduct these interviews.

• The students can help prepare a report that summarizes the results of the energy audit, and the results will be posted on this blog. Perhaps the students can present their findings to the rest of the Green Club or even present their findings to the school board.

Feel free to leave comments and give input on these ideas by clicking on COMMENTS at the end of this post. The Green Club is really excited about performing an energy audit because of the learning experience it creates for the students and the potential it has for reducing energy consumption at Woolridge Elementary School.

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November Environmental Meeting

During the November Environmental meeting, student representatives of Woolridge's environmental program learned about how important live plants were to the classroom. Each classroom received a live plant from the classroom's environmental parent representative. These plants will make the classrooms healthier and brighter for the kids. If your class did not receive a plant, just let us know - kim owens - markandkim@owensclan.com

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A Trip to the Grocery Store

Everyone goes to the grocery store. Who knew about all the things that many grocery stores do that help conserve and protect the environment? The stores do these things, not only because it helps protect the environment, it helps them save money as well. Here are some examples of things that many grocery stores do.

• Many grocery stores have skylights in the roof. They let in sunlight to help light the inside of the store. There are sensors that turn the lights off when the skylights provide enough light inside the store. Turning the lights off when they're not needed helps save energy.


• Some grocery stores have motion detectors inside the refrigerator and freezer display cases. They turn the display case lights on when someone is walking down the aisle. The lights turn back off when no one is in the aisle. Turning the lights on only when they're needed helps save energy.


• The lightbulbs in these display cases are LED bulbs. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. This type of light bulb uses much less energy than regular light bulbs, and they last a lot longer. LED bulbs give off very little heat and are cool to the touch. Because the LED bulbs give off less heat than regular light bulbs, the refrigerators and freezers don't have to work as hard to keep your favorite ice cream frozen.

The next time you go on a trip to the grocery store, see if you notice any of these things. Pay close attention on your next trip and ask yourself the following questions:

• What other ways do grocery stores help protect the environment?


• What products do they sell that are better for the environment?


• Why are these products better for the environment?

Click on the comments link at the bottom of this post and share your answers!

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