Rockets Recycle! continuded

Today was the first pick up of all the recycling in the school. SLA has created 9 bags worth of recycling in 3 days. That is a lot of recycling!!!! It took Robert and I about an hour to go around and collect it from all of the classrooms. It was just an exciting moment! Finally seeing something come out of all the hard work we have put into this project for the last two years. I was very proud!
Señorita Manuel and Mr Baird are tied right now for the most recycling. Mr Block and Ms G's bins had the most trash in them.
Congratulations Rockets! Way to recycle!

Sam and I in front of 9 bags of Recycling!

Our 9 bags of recycling waiting to be picked up on Monday morning!

Sam and I in the elevator bring the recycling downstairs.

Rockets Recycle!

Congratulations to everyone! SLA now has recycling! We have to give many thanks to Mark Alan Hughes, Ph.D.,Chief Policy Adviser to the Mayor and Director of Sustainability and Carlton Williams, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Streets City of Philadelphia for getting us our recycling bins. Once our recycling bins were obtained they were then placed in each classroom along with a sign explaining what can and cannot be recycled.
The day the bins rolled out each advisory had a disscution in advisory about recycling and whent over the sign. The recycling will be collected once a week.

Hopefully this will be a great success!

Green Leaf: Microwave Popcorn

Ok so I know I said this was going to be a weekly green tip and this topic isn't actually paired directly to green building, but this issue has got under my skin the past few days. We had a big discussion in my house about types of popcorn. My dad tried to bring in microwave popcorn into our house this weekend. I have major issues with microwave popcorn.

• First there are a magnitude of chemicals in the popcorn with the cheese that I would not want in my body.
• Secondly when the bag is heated up all the plastic in the bag seeps into the popcorn which you then eat. This could make you get cancer in a very severe case or if you eat too much.
• Thirdly there is so much unnecessary packaging that comes along with the microwave popcorn that goes into the landfill and hurts our earth.

Those are 3 reasons why you should stay away from microwave popcorn.

Green Leaf: post-consumer paper

So i have decided i'm going to start a weekly entry with quick easy tips on making your life more green. I'm going to call them Green Leaves so that if you put them all together it is like making a green tree full of green ideas. 

This first green leaf is about post-consumer paper. For all your printing and photo-copying needs (ok all office paper needs really, but we will start with the printers and photo-copiers) try and have at least 30% post-consumer paper. Post-consumer paper is just as bright as normal virgin paper, so get all the rumors about it not being out of your head. Post-consumer paper is also much more environmentally friendly. It takes much less energy and resources to make than virgin paper. Further more there is no bleach and other harmful chemicals in it like virgin paper. You can get it at all your local office supply stores as well so you don't even have to go out of your way to get it. It is true it is a little more expensive, but you'll feel good about doing something healthy for the earth! Here are some links to stores: Office Max 30% (if you want to go even further: Office Max 100%) and  Staples 50%  (or for 100%). 

Don't forget to then recycle your paper when your done with it!

Advisory questions

What do you want out of the last three months of your ILP and how are you going to get it?
I want to actually get somewhere and have some sort of actual evidence that we are getting something done. I think that is going to involve something with a recycling program

What are the things that you could use to do further research from your ILP
My whole ILP of learning about sustainability and greening the school can be furthered into my capstone project. There is so much more that i could be reading, learning and doing if i had more time to do so other than 2hrs a week.

How could your ILP experience improve?
My ILP could improve by actually knowing really what i have to be doing. All the mentors that i have been working with have kinda dropped out and i'm no longer really hearing from them.

If an SLA student were to do your ILP again, what suggestions you would make?
If another student were to do my ILP i would say make sure you have a strong mentor to start out with. That you have other people to bounce ideas off of. And really make sure you keep a journal about what you are doing. A journal that gets updated more than once a month (if that)

A Very Late Educon Reflecton

So I know this is extremely late, but better late than never right?
Our Educon presentation went very well. We had very few people in our room though, and Peter never showed up which we though he would. Robert and I had to kind of ad-lib the part of the presentation where Peter was supposed to talk. Other than that things went smoothly.
Meg Peterson a student from Canada came to our talk and we had a great time afterwards talking to her about things that her school was doing and what we thought we could have both schools do to become more green. One thought was to set up a wikispace that connected the two schools where we could post what we were doing and photos. So far we have not gone on to actually put that into action, but hopefully we will talk soon again and do something.
I did find that this Educon was not as helpful as last year.

March update!

So here is another quick update on our project.

* Jason has still to get back to us with the calculations from his computer
* Went and saw Edinburgh University and saw their green building. (whole side with solar panels!)
* Finished my english project

Waste in the Philadelphia School District

View more presentations from Alison . (tags: waste sla)

* Presented with Robert Y. at educon 2.1! that went really well
* Proposal put together and sent out for a USGBC Green Build conference in November in AZ.
* Trying to call the school district to talk to them about recycling
* Researching recycling programs in the area
* Writing a 500 word essay about how our school is green for a contest