Jaylen Schmitt at Alameda Elementary –
Jaylen has a vibrant green team bringing a more sustainable culture to Alameda all year long. Earth Day is a time when all eyes are on the environment and is a great opportunity to get the whole community involved; the green team did just that.
First they presented an assembly on how to reduce your carbon footprint and set up a challenge with prizes. Students were given a fact sheet and checklist of things they could do to reduce their individual footprint. The following week they returned their forms for entry into a drawing for fluorescent light bulbs, bike helmets, waste-free lunch boxes, and garden kits. The green team then wrote an article with results for the school newsletter.
Jaylen and the green team also organized a big recycling drive focusing on hard-to-recycle items, such as block Styrofoam, eyeglasses, athletic shoes, and batteries. They used this project as a way to educate the school community with a display of how much of each item is currently landfilled, the problems with disposal, and how the items would be reused or recycled. The results were huge! They collected about 40 cubic feet of Styrofoam recycled at Recology, 250 pounds of batteries taken to Batteries Plus, nearly 200 pairs of shoes donated to a church and some used for sports surfaces, and 37 pairs of glasses reused by the Lions Club.