Cottage Street School Green Team Timeline

The school introduced recess before lunch to decrease food waste and improve student behavior. Many school districts have found that students excited about the opportunity to play outside rush through or entirely skip their lunch, leaving them hungry later in the day and creating more cafeteria waste. Schools that schedule recess before lunch report that students eat healthier lunches, waste less food, and are better behaved on the playground, in the lunchroom and in the classroom, according to an article in the Journal of Child Nutrition and Management.

Walking Wednesdays was introduced as a way to promote a healthier and more environmentally-friendly way for students to get to school. Parents drop their children off at designated spots surrounding the school neighborhood where teachers and parent volunteers meet with the students and walk them to school. The students really enjoy this weekly tradition and are able to exercise before the school day begins!

This year, students are continuing the recycling and composting program with the help of parent volunteers. The 4th and 5th grade students are stepping up as Green Team Captains to lead the school’s initiatives in finding additional ways to reduce waste and protect our environment.

We started this year with a new teacher at the helm, Kelly Driscoll, and a larger group of parents supporting the program. All students at Cottage are now part of the Green Team, as we want to instill environmental values and stewardship school- wide. Each Friday morning, parent volunteers help collect the recycled paper that students from every classroom bring to the cafeteria. All kids have the opportunity to participate. The paper is then weighed and taken out to theAbitibi bin. We are in the process of developing a graph of paper recycled over time, showing how many trees we are saving when new paper is made from the paper we recycle. As of Dec 1, 2012, we have already recycled enough paper to save more than three trees!

Our efforts to compost fruit and veggie scraps in the cafeteria continue. Students in grade 5 volunteer to dispose of the compost material twice a week by bringing it to the large composting bin by the school garden at the back of the school. Parent volunteers also assist by layering thecompost bin with hay and leaves and by putting in worms to help the breakdown of organic material.

Bins for recycling plastic are also set up for 5 cent bottles, as well as non-redeemable plastic and aluminum containers. Students and staff members have been doing a great job dispensing the bottles into the correct bins.

At the Cottage Street School Fun Fair on Sunday, March 24 we educated parents and students about Waste-Free Lunch and how you can get involved with the Cottage Green Team. We provided samples of a variety of lunch kits and information on how to pack a no-hassle, waste-free lunch.

Check out the Waste-Free Lunch Challenge! blog entry to learn more!

Together, as a family, think about what your Earth Day promise might be. Can you commit to doing one thing to live more sustainably? Use the sheet on the blog as a guide. Let us know your ideas!

We started our Waste-Free Lunch kickoff by doing a baseline weigh-in of what the students are throwing away at lunch. Our goal is to make improvements and reduce the amount of garbage we generate. In the coming weeks, we will work together to educate families and students to pack a waste-free lunch and then we will repeat our weigh-ins several more times this school year. It will be fun to encourage some healthy competition between the grades! :)

Students and staff can take a sip or fill their reusable bottle. In just a few month's time the counter told us we had kept 1,000 water bottles out of landfills!

In the fall and spring we take out the Kindergarteners to see our compost and we harvest from our Kindergarten garden.

We will have a variety of fun games where you will explore, challenge yourself, and learn about ways to green our school,
a really cool upcycled crafting table, and your own green card to take home. Leave with a few exciting prizes and homemade crafts!

In the spring we take out the Kindergarteners to see our compost and we plant our Kindergarten garden. The goal is to use some of what we plant for pizza day in the cafeteria!