Brackett's Earth Day Celebrations!

 MONDAY

• COME SEE THE NEW COMPOST TUMBLERS IN ACTION!
• GIVE IT A WHIRL AFTER SCHOOL ON THE CAFETERIA TERRACE
• WE'RE MAKING FRESH SOIL FROM OLD FOOD!
• GET A HAND STAMP AT DROP-OFF AND SHOW YOU LOVE THE EARTH
• LOOK FOR EVENTS IN THE COMMUNITY& THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN DO

 

TUESDAY

• THINK HEALTHY — BRING A NUTRITIOUS SNACK TO SCHOOL
• FRUIT—IT’S YUMMY, SWEET, NUTRITIOUS,
• AND PACKED IN ITS OWN BIODEGRADABLE WRAPPER

 

WASTE FREE WEDNESDAY!

• CONTINUE THE GOOD WORK TO REDUCE REUSE AND RECYCLE AT THE CAFETERIA
• PACK A LUNCH USING ONLY REUSABLE CONTAINERS - NOTHING DISPOSABLE
• SEE HOW MUCH LESS WASTE WE WEIGH AFTER LUNCH

 

THURSDAY MOVIE NIGHT!

• ADULTS INVITED TO A PRIVATE VIEWING OF THE DOCUMENTARY “WASTE LAND”
• PRE POTLUCK PARTY & DISCUSSION AFTERWARDS—FIREFLY MOON @ 7:30 PM

 

FRIDAY OPEN GREEN HOUSE AND MOVIE NIGHT!

• KIDS CAN JOIN FAMILY & FRIENDS TO SEE “THE LORAX” MOVIE - PUBLIC SHOWING AT THE CAPITOL THEATER AT 5 and 7:10 PM
• COME SEE WHAT’S GROWING IN THE GREEN HOUSE — 3RD FLR AFTER SCHOOL
• TRY YOUR HAND AT A PLANTING ACTIVITY
• PLACE YOUR ORDER FOR A MINI PIZZA GARDEN — TO BE READY AT JUNE FAIR

MAKE EVERY DAY EARTH DAY!

For more detailed information check out the GREEN corner on the Brackett School Website or talk to someone in the Green Initiatives Group

"Let's hop to it!"

Lunch Waste Project

We had a few questions about waste.

A bunch of parents, volunteers, staff and students conducted an experiment in the lunch room. Instead of throwing all our garbage into one big bin . . .

We sorted it into 4 categories:

• Recyclable materials
• Compostable food
• Lunch trays
• Trash

We had a lot of questions about what goes where:

• Do milk cartons and juice boxes get treated the same?
• If the plastic doesn’t have a number on it, is it still recyclable? 
• Is paper considered trash, recyclable or compost?
• . . . and many others

We weighed the bags and figured averages:

All the lunch periods combined produce an average of 70 punds of garbage per day!

Everyone did a really good job and we learned a lot. Check out the charts and pictures on the next pages. And stay tuned because . . .

We still have lots of questions!

What waste do we produce?

Our initial survey indicates that the lunch room alone produces on average almost 70 pounds of garbage each day.!

That’s about eight bags full including two giant bags of styrofoam lunch trays.

Sometimes it looked and smelled pretty gross.

When we were done, the garbage bags took a bow.

Where does our waste go?

What happens next?

At the incinerator everything gets burned. The residual ash is transported to a landfill. Energy that is generated from the burning is captured and sold.

The process diagram might look something like this:

At the recycling plant things get sorted out, re-bundled, and sold. The bundled recycled material goes to places as far as North Carolina, Canada, Mexico and even India!

The process might look something like this:

We still have lots of questions!

Here's how much waste we produce in one week at Brackett.

Click here to see how much we produce in a day, a week, a month, and a year!