Seattle Goes Green

          My article is about Seattle going even more green than they already were. They want to reduce the garbage that is going to the landfills. They have changed a ton of the rules that will make this happen. One thing that they have done is stopped the styrofoam take-out and plastic bags. Another idea that they have is to make the people recycle cardboard and compost their food scraps. Many other cities think that they can make this “project” even bigger. They want to pick up garbage only every other week. This would save the city at least $6 million each year. It will also keep 1,400 tons of waste out of the landfills.
          Seattle wants to try it on 800 different homes first to make sure that it isn’t a terrible mistake. Most of the other cities collect their trash every week. But some of the cities collect it less frequently. Some people got very upset with all of the gross garbage sitting by their houses and smelling terrible. If Seattle does do this, it will bring the recycling rate up to 60%! I think that this is a fantastic idea that many other cities should follow along with. It would help out our environment a ton.
          This article will help out a ton. We now know how many different “projects” that we can do to help out the environment. I think that we could do just as many projects in our school and even around our city. Something else that I learned from this that can help us is that they aren’t giving up. Like I said, they are going to do test runs on 800 families. I know that we will want to give up sometime, but if we follow what Seattle did, we will succeed.


Le, Phuong. Bloomberg Businessweek. 2012.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-04/D9U2OVV80.htm>.

Week 3 Blog

This week, there has been a lot going on. Something that is going to start this week is collecting the cardboard from all of the teachers. We made the cardboard video over the weekend and posted it on youtube. Our principal agreed to give all the teachers the link to show their class. It will give them all of the information about the collections we will have. It also tells the process of how cardboard is recycled. My group is really hoping that we will be able to persuade the kids to bring in the items. Participation is a really big part of this project and if we don’t have that, the project will fail.

We have made lots of changes to our plans so far. We are moving the collection dates a week later. We didn’t realize how fast that it was coming so we weren’t as prepared as we should have been. The recycling team also added something to our plans. On May 5th, we will be having a paper drive in the back parking lot of our school. We gave out fliers to the neighborhood around the school, and will hopefully have a lot of participation. Something else that will happen this weekend is making the video about recycling plastic for the next collection.

We have finally come up with the last two projects that we will do. The first one is a competition for the 3rd graders. We want them to collect as much recyclable items as they possibly can. Each class will have a box that we will weigh at the end. The winning class will get to plant a tree on the school grounds. The next project that we have is also for the 3rd graders. In art class, we are going to have all the kids create something out of totally recycled materials. While they are making the project, our whole team will be teaching them more about recycling. The main goal at the end of this is to teach them that it can be fun to recycle and that it is so easy.

recycling cardboard

My team made a video to promote recycling cardboard in the school. It includes a TON of facts. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V23feO6dUU8

our recycling website

This is the website that my group has made that has facts about recycling and a little more information about our project ideas. 
http://recycle2012.webs.com/

week 2 blog

          For my project, we are getting our school aware of recycling and encouraging them to do it at their homes. What our plan is to put up recycling bins all around the school. Every two weeks, there will be a different item that you can put in the bin. The three items that we will be accepting is cardboard, plastic bottles, and batteries. At the beginning of each new item, all the students will watch a short video that we are making so that they know how good it is to recycle them. We want them to realize how bad it is to just throw away those things where they will end up in the ground (landfills). What we are doing right now is contacting different places to get the recycling bins. We are also putting up posters in all the halls that will tell them about our project.

          Today we created a letter to send out to all of the teachers. We wanted the principal to send it out in an E-blast. When we contacted him, he said that he would definitely do it and that he loves our project. We also got in contact with a few recycling centers to ask for bins. One of the locations said that they would give us 6 bins to use for the rest of the year. This would obviously be very useful to our project. We are going to have this start on Monday or Tuesday and end sometime in May. We are hoping that we get as much recyclable items that we possibly can. It would definitely be a help to the community/environment. By the end of each week, we really want every bin to be filled up to the rim in the school.


          We have come up with a ton more ideas to do. What we want to do is have a contest in the school. Every class will make something out of completely recycled items in the elementary. The winner of each wing will get to plant a couple trees at school. Something else we want is for every kid to have a tree seed sent home with them for Earth Day. Another idea that we have is to have a paper drive on a Saturday in the parking lot of the school. We will give fliers all around the neighborhood and encourage everyone to bring all their newspapers and any other kind. Something we looked into is a place called Tree Huggers. They take anything recyclable and turn it into household usable items. We want to give our items we collect to them to make more out of them. After all, we are trying to help out in the world and make it a better place for others.