Green Options

Being able to take advantage of solar incentives for could be a huge boon to community groups of all kinds, from churches to schools to gardening clubs and could be a great model to other states where urban dwellers lack rooftops of their own.

In my daughter’s backpack this morning, I discovered a note about school pictures, soon to be delivered. That brings to mind the topic of yearbooks. Here’s a product that has everything wrong with it from an environmental standpoint — coated paper (making the paper difficult to recycle), tons of ink, lots of unnecessary pages, and never recycled.

As schools and other educational institutions plan for next year’s yearbook process, is there a way to make it more environmentally friendly?

Tough economic times have caused one school in Ireland to ask students to bring their own toilet paper. Parents received the following request last week from principal Catherine O’Neill:

Dear parent, from time to time we will request your daughter to bring in a toilet roll to her class teacher. These rolls will be specifically for your daughter’s class and will be dispensed by the class teacher. We would also request that your daughter has tissues in her sack at all times.

If you’re looking for an easy, free way to raise money for your favorite environmental group, nonprofit, school, or charity, the new Freelanthropy toolbar can turn your searches into cash!

A study of about 3000 children in 32 schools in Germany found that installing water fountains, giving the children refillable water bottles, and using teaching lessons promoting the health benefits of water consumption reduced the risk of being overweight by 31%.

Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) is introducing a bill to Congress that would finally get junk foods out of our schools, addressing skyrocketing childhood obesity rates and bringing school nutrition standards forward 40 years.

“Despite pockets of progress in some states and school systems, most schools make junk food readily available to children. But junk food in schools helps fuel an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in children. And, it undercuts the considerable federal investment we make in the healthy school lunch program.” - Margo Wootan, Center for Science in the Public Interest nutrition policy director

A recently passed New York City law cuts down the acceptable limit of vehicle idling time in school zones from 3 minutes to 1 minute. According to an AP report, the law also gives additional city agencies the ability to issue violations and creates a way for officials to track those violations.

Idling in school zones is not a city problem, only. Take a look at any suburban grammar school, like the one my sons attend, and you’ll see an after school mess of idling cars and school buses. What does this say about our culture?

• We aren’t concerned about the waste of our natural resources?
• We’ve got money to burn in our gas tanks?
• We don’t care about the pollution we’re creating, even when it’s harming our children?
• We’re too darn lazy to turn our car engines off?

Yep, all of the above.

Water fountains in some L.A. schools tested up to 500 times the government level for lead, and high lead levels have been found in our capitol’s water system, but covered up with ‘science fraud‘.

In a nation that’s getting ready to distribute an economic stimulus package of astronomic size, where is the money to stop poisoning our kids?

The author of the exposé of the D.C. lead incident, professor Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer, had this to say: “There’s no question that lead in schools is a big national issue —especially in some of the older urban cities that have this old plumbing infrastructure.”

U.S. schools spend more on utilities than books and computers combined.

Public schools spent $8 billion on utilities in 2002, up by $2 billion from 2000, and the fluctuating utility and oil prices can be daunting when planning for the future.  Although natural gas and oil prices have come down significantly from their high last July, it is important to remember their recent impact.

Editor’s note: The following post was written by Michael D. Nolan and was sent to me by the Community Arts and Murals Blog. This is something I strongly believe in as a teacher and artists, and I love the idea of a Green Arts Corps.

The National Campaign to Hire Artists to Work in Schools

By Michael D. Nolan

Some of our nation’s greatest artists will join Barack Obama on center stage for the historic presidential Inaugural on January 20.  Yo-Yo Ma, Aretha Franklin, Itzhak Perlman and poet Elizabeth Alexander will lend their exceptional creative talents to an event financed to a large degree by Hollywood artists like Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Sharon Stone and Steven Spielberg.

Ironically, these great artists grew up in environments which fostered the arts in the schools.

Today, when it comes to national policy and Congressional appropriations, artists are relegated offstage.  Just about every major civilized country has a Ministry of Culture functioning at a Cabinet level.  Our small National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities are lucky each budget cycle if they can survive decimation or demise.

I find two trends in education alarming: the growing number of schools that eliminate recess and physical education programs and the large number of children on Ritalin for attention problems. As a teacher, I can’t help but wonder if the attention problems some children experience is due to the structure and expectations of education and life in the 21st century. Children were not designed to just sit at desks all day long without much opportunity for movement and interaction.

A friend of mine, who also happens to be our school nurse, has a son with ADD.  This child takes rRitalin during the school year; however, during summer vacation, he is drug free.  It is only during the structured, restricted environment of school that this child needs drugs to focus.  Given recent research on the subject, I can’t help but believe recess and play matters greatly for all children, especially those suspected of having attention problems.