Sprout gets the holiday spirit

Yes it's me, I know the hat is a bit embarassing....

I've taken over a display case at Clemson Elementary this week. With all the holiday preparations and celebrations going on, I wanted to share some of my experience going green and give you some tips.

Don't be afraid to get creative when you decorate your room and wrap those presents you worked so hard on. Use some of your artwork, a piece of fabric, an old map, a favorite page in a magazine and tie it all up with a bow - Or reuse a paper can from the kitchen, a lot of them are silver cardboard under the label ( mixed nuts for example)- vegetables often come in some pretty cool packages too...check out the case for some more ideas.

By the way, I'm sure you'll come up with some good ideas of your own, so send me a message, I'd love to hear from you!

Happy Holidays!

Sprout has spoken

A Morning Announcement

A: I can hardly wait for Thanksgiving! Mmmm – the turkey, the mashed potatoes, my grandma’s pies… I’m hungry already!
B: Sounds yummie! But don’t forget to be green during the holidays!

A: Green? Green in the face?

B: No, not in your face, in your ACTIONS! Think of how the poor pilgrims were starving! And these days almost one third of all the food produced in the US goes into the garbage. More than 31 billion dollars worth of food end up in landfills each year! Some 49 million people could be fed from all that wasted food.
A: Oh, now I get it! We should be green by not wasting our food. We should take what we need and eat what’s on our plate.
B: Right on! Isn’t that what your mother always says anyways?! Not wasting and sharing what you have makes Thanksgiving green!
A+B: GO GREEN!

November Recycling Numbers

Sprout has spoken ---

A Morning Announcement:
A: Do I have a green tip for you today!
B: Tell us!A: Turn your paper!
B: Turn my paper? (turns the script paper in his/her hand)
A: No, don’t do it now. This is the green tip for today: use the other side of your scratch paper! This tip is coming from the 4th graders, who will be allowed to turn in some of their homework assignments on the back of scratch paper for Ms. Sims class.
B: And Ms McGinn’s class has its own scratch paper pile that kindergardeners can use to draw on!
A: Cool! This means these kids reuse their paper before they recycle it! Way to go green!

Sprout has spoken ---

I got a message out on the Morning Announcement this week!
Read it bellow:



A: I’m sad Halloween is over!
B: I know. And I’m even sadder that my Jack-o-Lanterns has started to rot.
A: Mine is very shriveled, too. I think it’s time to put it into the compost.
B: Put it where?
A: Into the compost… It’s a pile of vegetable waste we have at home. In our compost pile vegetables break down and turn into rich soil. Maybe you should start one at your house. If you compost your raw vegetables, you’ll have much less trash is your trash-can!
B: Yes, I’ll have to think about that. I’ve heard that the Ms. Hardin’s Intermediate Multi-age class is collecting vegetable scraps and will observe how it decomposes.
A: I’d like to see that, too! Composting is great way to go green!

Paperless

I can hardly wait to start using less paper at Clemson Elementary! All the trees we could save from being chopped down! (I do feel very close to all things that start out as SPROUTs!)

Starting November 3rd, all families that signed up for paperless communication will have a few sheets less in their Monday folders. Every Monday, they will recieve an e-mail from the school with school-wide newsletters, fliers attached to it.

Should you have any problems with the e-mails, please contact my friend, Celia (ceels@bellsouth.net). The smoother we can make this operation run, the more we can save.

Read on (my comments) to see how the system is set up.

Fall Festival

I hope to see you at the Clemson Elementary fall festival. You'll find my banner over the go green table and my picture on the aprons of the go green team (I'm blushing...). Stop by and build along with our cardboard castle project, put a suggestion in the box, or just say hello.
Check out the new links over on the side while you're here...

Cafeteria waste

In our environmental audit we identified paper waste and cafeteria waste as the two major sources of concern at Clemson Elementary. Addressing the second, I (Sprout) and my helpers ran a week-long trial recycling activity at the school. We set up recycling for plastic bottles and cans. We helped the kids with learning how to dispose their plastic bottles and cans, and they became masters of it within a week!!! Way to go students! Thanks to the kids, we collected more than 400 pieces of #1 PETEorPET plastic bottles within the week!

green school lunches

By one estimate, an average school-age child using a disposable lunch, generates 67 pounds of waste per school year. That would add up to about 50,250 pounds of lunch waste for Clemson Elementary School alone. Get inspired to green your lunchbox by thinking about what you can do to cut down on trash. Here are a few suggestions for getting started:

-Pack a cloth napkin instead of paper.
-Pack stainless-steel utensils or reuse plastic ones.
-Pack a reusable drink container instead of disposable juice boxes, pouches, cans, and plastic bottles.
-Pack lunch items in reusable containers. Try to avoid using plastic wraps, plastic bags, wax-paper bags, and aluminum foil.
-Avoid purchasing pre-packaged items.
-Pack lunches in a lunch box instead of relying on paper or plastic bags.

Check out http://www.wastefreelunches.org/ for more information

Think

"Think about where things come from, how they get made, where they end up when thrown away."

Laurie David, Environmentalist

let's talk

This forum is for an open discussion of "green matters" at Clemson Elementary. However, you can only leave a comment directly on this blog if you have a google account. If you don't, use the e-mail address: gogreence@gmail.com to send your comments and ideas anytime. Sprout will feed your thoughts into this blog - promise!

Here we go...!

Clemson Elementary is ready to GO GREEN. With the launch of this PTA-sponsored grass-root initiative, we’ll help to make our school into a place where our kinds can learn and practice environmentally responsible behavior.