Green Happenings 2012/13

Green Event Calendar

The BCBC Green Committee is excited about another FUN and educational greener school year!

Every Friday: is Composting Friday

September: First Lunch Trash Weigh Out

We’ll monitor the amount of trash all school year long,
encouraging students to RRR!

October: Healthy Eating Education

We’ll educate students in the classroom about healthier eating habits.

In collaboration with HEB Westlake. 

November 2^nd: Pumpkin collection

Bring your Halloween pumpkins to school and
we’ll deliver them to local farmers.

November 15^th: America Recycles Day
BCE will take the pledge and we will recycle 1 new item at school!

April: Earth Week

May: Collect ALL Plastic bags for recycling

May 1^st: no more Plastic Bags in Austin!!!
We’ll help recycle all your plastic bags!
In collaboration with HEB Westlake.

Green Reminders:

·      At BCE we collect electronics for recycling.

·      We encourage all parents to pack reusable lunchboxes.

                                              

Flip Flop Recycling!

Bring your old Flip Flops (all brands and types) to BCE

anytime during the month of November.

The Flip Flop Recycle Box is located near the front office at BCE.

Our school will recycle them through TerraCycle.

America Recycles Day is in November.

Help us recycle all these old Flip Flops this month!

Thanks.

BCBC Green Committee

BCE wins Longhorn Recycle Round up Green Award!

BCE was a Longhorn Recycle Roundup Winner! 
Due to the efforts of our teachers, students and parents, BCE was recognized for our outstanding campus recycling, conservation, and beautification initiatives. 
BCE was one of five campuses in the greater Austin area selected as a winner.

http://www.keepaustinbeautiful.org/LRR2012Winners

Pumpkin alert II

 ORANGE is the new “Green” for Halloween

And orange it was:
BCE collected 1 trailer and 1 pick up truck full of pumpkins on Friday, November 2nd, 2012.
This is BCE's second year in collecting pumpkins for local farmers.

A BIG THANK YOU to all of BCE students, teachers, staff, BCE Dad's club and parents to donate their time, pick up trucks, trailer and Halloween pumpkins.
Supporting our local farmers is very important in this economy and current drought!

We drove the pumpkins out to Green Gates Farm (they are sharing BCE pumpkins with the McGeary Farm).

Green Gates Farm:

* Unloading pumpkins:

* Happy pigs:

 * Giving pumpkins to two more pigs (never seen pigs THIS big!!!):

 * Pumpkins on compost pile:

(Chickens and the goat also got some pumpkins and were munching away).
For BCE students it was a great learning experience!
Reuse of pumpkins, visiting a local farm, being appreciated by the local farmers!

We are hoping for an even bigger pumpkin event next year!



 ORANGE is the new “green” for Halloween at BCE

DON’T SCARE THE EARTH ON HALLOWEEN!

This FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2^th the Barton Creek Elementary School will be collecting carved and uncarved pumpkins to share with nearby pig and cattle farms.

Parent and student volunteers will be collecting your pumpkins during morning “Drop- Off” OR if you prefer, place your pumpkins along the grassy area at the back of the big parking lot anytime that same day. The pumpkins will leave BCE after school.

Not only will we be making quite a few cows and pigs happy with a pumpkin feast, our Earth will thank you as well for being ORANGE (The new “green” for Halloween)! 

Did You Know?
"About 1.1 billion pounds of pumpkin end up in our landfills after Halloween. Not only do these pumpkins take up space, they emit methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide." [1]

 “If just 10 percent of all pumpkins sold this year were composted instead of being thrown out with the garbage, 100 million pounds of waste could be kept from the nation's landfills annually. The effect of this level of waste reduction would be as though nearly 42,000 U.S. households stopped producing garbage altogether.” [2]

[1] http://www.opportunitygreen.com

[2] www.blueegg.com/answer/Compost-Your-Jack-O-Lantern.html

Featured: Ms Bowerman's 2nd grade class: Bottle Caps!!!

One innovative teacher, 

22 creative students, 

764 collected bottle caps: 

an awesome example of REUSE!!! 

Ms Bowerman's 2nd grade class collected 764 bottle caps.
These bottle caps were turned into math and spelling games for K through 2nd grade classrooms.

The students first counted the bottle caps:

4 student groups were formed.
These groups brainstormed on what game to make, for which grade level, and how many bottle caps they needed for the game.

Still thinking...

One group wrote the ABC on the bottle caps, for this game the player needs to arrange the bottle caps in alphabetical order (for Kindergarten class):

This group made a spelling game for 1st grade:

Another group created a math game, learning how to count money, for 2nd graders:

Finally writing down directions:

Games were delivered to classrooms. Happy learning! Great REUSE!

First Lunch Trash weigh out!

The Green Committee weighed trash in the cafeteria today, October 2nd.

Our BCE students produced a very sad 168 lbs of trash:
this is the trash from just 1 lunch!!!

168 lbs x 5 days = 840 lbs per week
840 lbs x 36 school weeks =      30,240 lbs     per school year!!!
And yes, that number is in red because it is very alarming, don't you think?

How you can help?
* talk to your student about making healthy eating choices: we compost on Fridays but all other days all the leftover fruit and veggies will go into trash!
* if you pack lunch for your student: use a reusable lunch box,
communicate with your child on what he would like to eat for lunch,
encourage your child to eat his/her lunch and also
if she/he cannot finish his whole lunch, it is fine to take the rest back home (afternoon snack time?)


The Green Committee will weigh trash again in November after
HEB Westlake will provide a  
Healthy Eating education in all our classrooms.
We are very hopeful that students will reduce their trash afterwards
= eat more healthy food during lunch.
Stay tuned for more info on this awesome event!!!

Composting Fridays

Composting Fridays are back!!!

This school year, 2nd grade is in charge.
They have the last lunch period and hence get to compost.

4 students per Friday get to participate.
We weigh the compost before putting it into the compost tumbler ( = hands on math!!!)
On Friday, September 28th, we had 44 lbs of compost!!!

BIG Thank You to our Booster club to sponsor a new compost tumbler!
The students had a lot of fun with it: rotating the tumbler to get the compost well mixed.
With this tumbler we'll have compost in no time!

Our compost from last school year is ready for gardening.