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.

4th Grade: Paper Recycling

A big Thank You to Mrs Alkire's students
who took the extra time today to weigh how much paper BCE recycles per week.

They collected 93 lbs of paper and recycled that.

Estimate:
90 lbs of paper every Friday x 35 Fridays per school year = 3,150 lbs
of paper per school year.

That's quite A LOT of paper BCE saves from going into trash!
Way to go!!!

Mrs Stover and some of her 4th grade students recycling paper.

BCE bans helium balloons!

 

A HELIUM balloon will cost $100…

…by next year and won’t exist anymore by 2015!!!

The US will liquidate its

Federal helium reserve by 2015.

Curious why you won’t see HELIUM balloons

at BCE anymore?

Booster Club wants to save our Earth’s precious helium.

Ever had an MRI or know of someone who did? 
No Helium = No more MRIs.

What YOU can do?

Stop buying helium balloons!!!

Thanks for supporting our Earth.

BCBC Green Committee

...and this is definitely NOT a joke.

Here is a pretty good sum up of the situation:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1696371/Global-helium-shortage-could-sink-clowns-and-super 

http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN12/wn051812.html

a Wonderful Greener 2011/2012 School year at BCE

Shred Day 2012 at BCE

A big THANKS to Scott Lowrey and "Certified Shred" 

to donate his time and his company truck to shred sensitive papers, bank documents, tax returns for our community.

Did you know that shredded paper cannot go into a single household recycling bin?

Certified Shred will bring the shredded paper to a recycling facility. 

Most of the paper will be made into toilet paper!!!

****

Announcement

Shred Day 2012

Saturday, April 28^th,

9 to 11 am

at BCE

Barton Creek Elementary and Certified Shred are hosting a shred day to give the community and businesses the opportunity to keep their identity safe while helping the environment.  

Shred Day 2012 is a free on-site document shredding event which allows people and businesses to shred their

old bank statements, tax returns, and any other sensitive documents they may have.  

Keep in mind that we are only shredding documents,

so NO newspapers or any plastic material.

Plastic Bag Recycling

BCE students saved all these plastic bags from going into our landfills.
BCE collected over 17,000 plastic bags in 1 week!!!

It took 3 truck loads full to get these plastic bags to HEB Westlake
where the plastic bags will go to a recycling facility to be reused.


Who won the plastic bag contest?
Ms Schumann's class!

Ms Schumann's class and Mrs Bowerman's class collected each over 3,000 plastic bags!

Plastic bags have been around for only 50 years. Scientists are not sure how long they take to degenerate on a landfill. Actually plastic bags don't bio-degrade, they do photodegrade (through ultraviolet light).

Estimates range from 500 to 1,000 years...for sure a very long long time!

Our 17,000 plastic bags were just saved from spending 1000 years on a landfill!!!

****

Announcement

BCE and HEB Westlake are working together again!

BCE will collect Plastic Bags for Recycling 

all through Earth week.

History of this event:
Last year, 54 stores participated in the School Recycling Contest collecting more than 958,000 plastic bags!! The record amount of bags collected at one school is 83,000. The average school collects nearly 16,000 plastic bags. In 2011, HEB recycled 4.1 million plastic bags!!

What are the school's responsibilities?:
- each classroom must collect the bags from students daily
- school leader will need to submit the grade level that collected the most plastic bags and total bags collected as a school
- educators in each classroom will be responsible to keep track of all the bags collected daily then combine for a grand total at end of contest 

- contest will go for the entire week of April 16-20 

What will the winning classroom win?:
- celebration with HE Buddy, healthy snacks, drinks and a $150 HEB gift card 

Friday: Trash Reduction Contest

Our first unannounced weighing (Tuesday, April 10th):

Kindergarten:    28.00 lbs

1st grade:          33.60 lbs

2nd grade:         30.16 lbs

3rd grade:          27.47 lbs

4th grade:          24.52 lbs

5th grade:          22.78 lbs

The grade that will reduce their trash the most on Friday 
will receive extra recess!!!

How to reduce trash?

* Eat your food!!!
* compost all leftover fruit and veggies
* recycle all milk bottles
* bring in reusable lunch containers, Laptop Lunchboxes are great!!!
   ...order with BCE and you'll get free shipping and 15% discount on products!

Who won the trash reduction contest?

2nd grade!

2nd grade reduced trash by 25%!!! That was a total of 8 pounds less trash!!!

3rd grade reduced trash by 5 1/2 pounds and 1st grade reduced trash by 5 pounds!

Way to go BCE students!

****

What could possibly be better?

The students are actually keeping up their good RRR behavior.

On Friday in the cafeteria, I did not find a single milk bottle going into trash from 2nd grade. I had a student come to me asking me if he could recycle the 3 empty milk bottles I was holding in my hands. I was very impressed!!!

Thursday: Paper Bag decoration

BCE students decorated paper bags for HEB Westlake.
Those were handed out on Earth Day at HEB Westlake.

Paper bags were all very creative: pointing out Earth facts, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle facts.
Students did an awesome job!

 Some of the many paper bags:

HEB Westlake gave out prices for best decorated paper bag per grade!
Here are the winners:

Catherine, 5th grade, Mrs. Dearth's class

Grace B., 4th grade, Mrs. Alkire's class

Olivia, 3rd grade, Ms. Roberson's class

Madi, 2nd grade, Ms. Bowerman's class

Athena, 1st grade, Mrs. Peichoto's class

Joseph, Kindergarten, Ms. Hanley's class

Tristan, ELT grade, Ms. Swiderski's class

Congratulations!!!

*********

Announcement:


HEB Westlake and BCE are working together:

Each BCE students is decorating an HEB  
Paper Bag with Earth themes.

HEB will hand these out to costumers on
Earth Day, Sunday, April 22nd.

Come back here and check out our BCE's greatest Paper Bags!!!

Wednesday

Wait and see what green surprise Mrs Frederickson has for every grade!!!

Tuesday T-shirt Drive

Last year's week long T-shirt drive got Open Arms 350 T-shirts.
Could we beat this number in just 1 morning collection of T-shirts?

YES!!!
We collected 710 T-shirts this morning.
Way to go, BCE!!!
A whole minivan full of T-shirts:

BCE students learned that we can REUSE T-shirts!!!

Open Arms – a company with a conscience – was founded to employ refugee women living in Austin, Texas to help them break the cycle of poverty by earning a reasonable wage that enables them to support their families. 

Open Arms is on a mission to do it differently - creating awareness that everyday choices can change the world.

Open Arms reuses T-shirts to make beautiful skirts and scarves! 

********

Announcement

Recycle your T-shirts!

Donate your T-shirts!
We need your burnt orange, maroon, red, brown, gray and black T-shirts!
Your fun artsy T-shirts are welcome, too!
Bring them in and put them in the Open arms collection box.

BCE will have 5th grade student helpers to collect T-shirts in car lanes.

You'll be helping Open Arms, a company employing refugee women at a living wage in Austin, TX!
Their fashionable skirts and scarves are from re-purposed  100% recycled materials!

Drive Date and Collection Box Locations:

Tuesday, April 17th
Car lane and bus rider box

Monday March to School

120+ students   MARCHED from WRMS to BCE this morning.

What a great Kick-off Event to Earth week!

Our crossing guard at the middle school...it was a fun event for sure!
AND we did make sure our BCE students were all safe!!!

HEB Bee Caves donated bananas and water for the March.
No landfill waste. We composted a half bucket full of banana peels and served water in reusable cups.

Even the perfect shirt for the day: "Environmentalist (someday) NOW"

"I walked to School Today" Earth Week sticker for every walker:

And not to forget: "Tuesday T-shirt Drive":


**********
Announcement:

Drop off your BCE student between

7:10 am and 7:25 am

at WRMS (in car lane at front entrance)

and we will march your students to BCE.

Parents are welcome to walk with their kids!

Parking:

Volunteers: park along field and not in WRMS front lot

Marching Parents: you can park in WRMS front lot but need to remove your car by 7:50 am…you will have enough time to walk your student to BCE and then walk back..it is only a 10 min walk!

Drop off: same procedure as BCE

The Monday March to School event is a reminder to all of us to walk short distances rather than use our cars,

might it be to a friend’s house or the playground.

We can WALK!!!

Earth Week 2012 at BCE

Earth week

is April 16^th- April 22^nd 2012 at BCE!

We will have an educational, fun and “green” week!

Monday March to School:

Drop your BCE students off at WRMS between 7:10 am and 7:25 am

and we will march them with green surprises along the way to BCE!

(see details below)

Tuesday T-shirt Drive:

Bring your used T-shirts to BCE and Open Arms will reuse them!

We will collect T-shirts at car lanes as well as have a box out front for bus riders!

(see details below)

Wednesday

Mrs Frederickson has a green surprise for each grade level!

Thursday Paper Bag decoration:

Thursday is the deadline for students to bring in their decorated Paper Bag.

HEB Westlake customers will use these on Earth day.

HEB will choose a winner for best decorated bag for each grade

and will give out prizes!!!

Class with 100% participation will get a special surprise from Mrs Frederickson.

Friday Waste Reduction Contest:

Which grade can reduce their amount of trash the most?

Recycle, compost, reusable lunch boxes…

Winning grade will get extra recess!

                                              

Silverware!

This is a HUGE step towards getting greener at BCE:
we have SILVERWARE forks and spoons in our cafeteria since January!!!

Some first graders eating lunch, happily using silverware forks:

Just imagine how much plastic we are saving from going into trash=landfill by using reusalbe utensils!
500+ students times 1 fork and 1 spoon a day (I have seen students with 3 plastic forks and 4 plastic spoons on their trays before BCE switched to silverware)!!!