Update to the PTO, Nov 8, 2012

What’s the latest?

Well, in the last month the Green Team has moved forward with a handful of the checkpoints that put us closer to earning the Michigan Green School Certificate.

• We now have a blog (SouthArborGoesGreen.blogspot.com) to highlight the projects, collect ideas, and keep a record of the checkpoints for submission by March 2013.

• The Boy Scouts have constructed 2 bluebird houses, and hope to install them in the schoolyard come spring (permission pending).

• The Girl Scouts are researching and planning for a raised bed garden, to be installed in the spring.
• The Butterfly Garden is now complete, and has plant ID labels. There was even a report of a butterfly fluttering around in early October!

• Another Boy Scout troop is researching and planning to construct 2 bat houses, and hope to install them in the back of the property in the spring (permission pending).  (try to revise your feelings about bats to include the fact that they eat 1000 mosquito-sized insects in just 1 hour, thus reducing the need for crop pesticides.) (United Nations’ environmental division (UNEP) has declared 2012 the International Year of the Bat in recognition of the essential role that bats play in ecologies and human economies.)

• There are now TerraCycling containers in the lunchroom for collecting foil-type packaging from Capri Sun, chips, granola bars, candy and cookies, to be shipped to TerraCycle and made into other products such as backpacks, purses, pencil pouches, etc.  This process is called upcycling.  The Green Team is looking for a family that would be willing to box up all this packaging and send it to the TerraCycle company.  

• There are now posters in the halls reminding our community of the importance of recycling.

• We've opened the conversation with 2 classroom teachers about reducing the waste at holiday parties. The biggest culprits are individually packaged snacks and disposable tableware. When your child's teacher sends home a list of items to be donated, consider the landfill consequences and offer to donate a class set of reusable cups (and the service of washing them), a fruit tray, or supplies for a repurposing craft. Teachers generally welcome wise ideas!

One of several trash bags lining the halls after a recent holiday party.

Do you have any ideas for wise interactions with the environment?