EcoGrace

Recycling Station in the Works and Much More

Today's meeting accomplished many things

1) Finalized idea for a recycling station, to be intriguingly presented and manned throughout the day be Eclub members. We will display, as a visual, 7 or 8 different clear plastic cubes, each with either batteries, cell phones, plastic bottles/other plastics, cardboard, newspapers, paper, and trash filling them. They will all be on a tabletop with 7 corresponding holes, which will be connected to a trash bag, school recycling bin or separate collection container for the cell phones and batteries. Everything but the trash will be recycled. The idea is to get students/faculty/monitors/administrators to come with anything they were planning to throw away and learn how to dispose of it properly.

*Many of the school recycling bins are near overflowing after the ripple effect of the article in the school newspaper and our signs!!*

2) We are working to get the high school, then hopefully the district, buying wind energy in addition to our normal NYSEG energy bills. If they are unable to provide the funds, we will gladly fundraise.

3) We will hopefully be presenting a green tip of the day, every day, after Mr. Leprine's Quote of the Day in the morning announcements. This tip will also be appearing on the school home page.

4) Hopefully we can get a speaker to come speak to/with students after school. Our goal is to get a lot of people involved by engaging the health classes (mandatory for 10th graders, attendance could count as the course project), as well as science or social studies classes for extra-credit. Right now, we're hoping for John Hall, as he is very involved in these issues and our representative.

5) Check back next week!

Portable Battery

Seniors from the Walkabout program of Westchester are putting together a portable battery that will hopefully be used to power most if not all of the 15 computers in their work-study room. The battery will be attached to and powered by a solar panel and bicycle, which together create sustainable and renewable energy.  The students will also be traveling to various schools to give presentations about their work on the battery and how it will begin to change and better energy use if put in to place elsewhere.

Good News

We had a meeting with the director of waste management for the district about our recycling system. The high schools system was once set the standard, and has since fallen into disrepair. We have a company that will take sort through anything that can be recycled, all we have to do is put *CLEAN* recyclables into the "comingle" classic blue bins. The problem lies in contamination of the good stuff by half empty soda cans and laziness mixed with miseducation on what to recylcle on the part of many in the school. We're hoping to change that and our efforts to educate everyone about recyling will be monitored by the custodians to track our effectiveness. We hope to also feed some paper back to the printers, there's no need to waste a whole other good side! Another big thing will be advocating the cleanthliness of the school's water, which has gotten a bad rep. This way, people will be encouraged to refill and reuse. (Hopefully with their siggs!)

We are working to get a "Green Tip of the Week" up on the districts or at least high school's homepage so that people read the tip when they're in a position to take action (in their own home). Also, for anyone from the high school who maybe reading this, check out some of the new books the librarians have featured, there are a ton of really great environmental books out there. (Although, between the eclub members, we're hogging quite a bit of them :) )

Also, "in the news" there will be an article on recycling in the high school in the next publication of the school run Focus paper.

P.S. check out www.earthle.com, same search engine as google, but a black screen to decrease energy used! Very cool.