The Start Of Zero Waste The Green Team

What is Zero Waste? A zero waste campus is a school or company where anything recyclable is recycled. In order to get a zero waste campus you need to reduce all waste made by 90%. Paper, plastic, cardboard, food, and tin are all recycled whenever possible. We want to do this so our school makes less trash, and we help stop climate change.

What is the Green Team?

The Green Team is a school wide organization who are working to lower our carbon footprint. We work to make our school less wasteful by reducing our use of oil, waste of food, and making sure anything we can recycle gets recycled.

What has the Green Team done? Motion sensors in bathrooms The water bottle filler Paper newsletter taken away Water bottle vending machine taken away We've spoken at schools Compost program Electronics recycling Arbor Day/Tree Tip of the week No electricity day Walk to school day Cardboard recycling

Climate Change Carbon dioxide gas that we put in the air by burning fossil fuels goes up into the atmosphere and makes it thick, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Carbon comes from factories who produce carbon in the thick clouds, comes from motor vehicles, like our school bus and burning trash, heating our school and homes. It affects the glaciers, who melt and make the ocean rise, it messes with the food chain, migrations, spreads invasive species and disease, it affects the air quality, how thick the air is, and makes earth warmer. Weather is becoming ridiculous due to climate change, but becoming more eco friendly and conscious about our waste can help stop climate change.

Recycling In the future we would like to see classes only having one trash can for the things that we cannot recycle. We want to recycle everything we can, and we need your help to make this possible, just by taking the extra trip into the hallways where recycling bins will be.

Weekly Waste

Kitchen garbage Trash

Paper

Cardboard

41%

47%

1% 4% 6% Our total per year- 19,266 lbs

Tin/plastic

Weekly Waste Total Kitchen waste (ort)

43.3

Paper

6.7

Cardboard

4

Tin/plastic

1.5

Trash

49

This comes out to. . .

... 2408.25 cats

... 3.211 elephants

... About 1 schoolbus

... 459 kindergarteners

What about compost? We have created composting bins for our food waste. Each grade will have one month a school year where they take care of their lunches compost. Calendars will be brought to your teachers so they can remember the month your class participates. Our wasted food will be turned back into rich soil, which will be used in the greenhouse, to help us grow food!

The Tree! One of our members has gotten a miniature tree for us to bring around to classrooms. The tree has cards attached to it with writing on them explaining about trees and what makes up a tree. Trees are carbon sinks, they take carbon dioxide from the air and create oxygen. This tree will rotate around to class rooms every few weeks or so, letting everyone enjoy it and it's lively color.

Bins! We will have a system for the class rooms on both the upper and lower levels of the school. We have gotten bins to go outside of the classrooms where ALL of us will bring our discarded waste. Their will be a bin for plastics, a bin for cardboard, a bin for paper and several others. Their will be a system like this in the cafeteria as well.

What can you do? Waste less! Respect the earth and when you have garbage, throw it in its correct recycling bin. Don't throw your trash away when you're outside and be flexible and welcoming to our new bins. Talk to your parents about composting and recycling, have them explain more to you.

“Spring is natures way of saying 'Let's party'!”

–Robin Williams

Thanks for listening! Keep our school green!