Eco-Conference

On December 6th, 6 members of the EcoTeam went to to EcoConference held at Sacred Heart High School. There were many other schools there and we got a chance to showcase all of the great things we have been doing at St. James to help the environment. We also got to learn about the exciting projects going on all around our School Board. We will be introducing some of the ideas we learned about in the New Year. Stay tuned for more details!

PS We also were given 6 sets of really cool gardening tools which we can use in the Spring!

Welcome back!

Welcome back to a new school year. This year promises to be one full of new ideas and initiatives for our EcoTeam as we strive to maintain our Gold EcoSchools status!

Remember as you start to plan for school lunches that we promote litterless lunches.

Did you know that It has been estimated that on average a school-age child using a disposable lunch generates 67 pounds of waste per school year? That equates to 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for just one elementary school.

What can you do?
- Pack sandwiches in a reusable container instead of in a ziplock bag
- Make your own snack mix instead of sending a granola bar
- Send juice/water/milk in a reusable container instead of in a juice box or tetra-pack
- Cut cheese off of a larger brick and put in a reusable container with some crackers instead of buying cheese strings or the cheese and crackers packages
- Buy the large tub of yogurt and put it in a reusable container (could even add some fresh or frozen berries!) instead of yogurt tubes or single-serving yogurts

For more ideas, visit these websites:

Lunch Without Waste

Living Green, Living Well

The main goal is to leave the packaging at the store! By taking small steps, we can make a big difference.

Go Green!

St. James is now a certified Gold EcoSchool!

Woohoo! St. James is now a certified GOLD EcoSchool! The certification process recognizes a school for its annual achievement in 4 key areas: energy conservation, waste minimization, ecological literacy and school ground greening. Congratulations to all EcoTeam members, staff and most importantly all of the students! We could not have done this without all your hard work and dedication!

Butterfly release!

Today the grade 1 students released the butterflies that they have been raising. The photo shows one of the many butterflies fluttering in our St. James garden. Let's hope they find it to be a wonderful habitat and stick around! Here is an irish blessing in honour of these beautiful creatures:

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun

and find your shoulder to light on,

To bring you luck, happiness and riches.

Today, tomorrow and beyond.

How does your garden grow?

Thanks to all of EcoTeam members, parent volunteers and teachers efforts, our front garden looks great! Everyone has been busy weeding, planting and watering to make sure that our garden not only looks great but will be a great habitat for the butterflies that our grade 1s have been growing. We are looking forward to their release!

Calling all EcoMembers with a GREEN thumb!

Next week, we will continue continue beautifying our yard by working on our front garden! Don't forget to bring your gardening gloves and keep your fingers crossed for great weather next Tuesday!

Second Waste Audit Results

On April 20th, we conducted our second waste audit of the year. To do this, we collected 24 hours of garbage and recycling and did a visual audit using clear bags and visual estimation. We also weighed the garbage and recorded all of our findings. All together we had 7 bags of garbage with a total mass of 1.7 kg and 3 bags of recycling with a total mass of 9.3 kg.

In February 36.5% of our garbage was actual garbage, in April that number has increased to 84%! In addition, our recycling was 99.1% recyclable paper and plastics! Back in February, each student was generating 7 kg of garbage per year, now, thanks to everyone’s hard work, we are now generating .94 kg per student per year.
That is a 744% improvement! WOW!!!
Congratulations! Together we are making a real difference by reducing our waste!

Happy Earth Week!

Thanks to everyone for all their efforts last Friday as we began our Earth Week Celebration a little bit early by cleaning up the capital. All together we collected 40 bags of garbage and 8 large bags of Organic Waste! Our community looks beautiful!

This Friday is Earth Day. For some ideas on how to celebrate it at home you can visit:

http://www.earthdayottawa.ca/

There are some great activities happening around our city that are free of charge! My personal favourite is free admission to the Museum of Nature in honour of Earth Day, but there are many more suggestions to check out. And remember, everyday is Earth day :)

Cleaning the Capital

This Friday our school will be participating in the city of Ottawa's Spring Cleaning the Capital campaign. Primary students will be working on our school yard while our junior students will be heading out to nearby parks to beautify our community.

Littering is a major environmental concern. It has negative effects on animal habitats, our waterways and it is a fire hazard. It costs lots of money to clean it up and it can make a beautiful place ugly. Let's do our part to make our community litter-free by cleaning up and getting rid of our own garbage properly! Together, we can care for God's creation!

Litterless Lunches

Today the EcoTeam showed our first production on litterless lunches. A huge thank you to our Eco-Superstars who helped make the video a success (my favourite part was the bloopers!). For those of you who want more info on litterless lunches, here it is:

What? Sending lunch in re-usable containers

Why? To encourage the 4th "R"...Re-Think! It is time we started to re-think the way we make school lunches. It is easy to go litterless, but it does mean re-thinking what you buy at the grocery store.

For example: - Buy the large tub of yogurt instead of tubes or individual cups. The large tub can be recycled, but the individually packaged yogurt goes in the garbage.

- Even though juice boxes can be recycled, buying one can of concentrate goes a lot farther in re-usable drink containers and creates a lot less waste.

- Cheese and crackers is a simple snack to make, and is healthier than the processed cheese that comes in the snack packs.

Just remember...leave the packaging at the store!

Earth Hour

Did you know that we are participating in Earth Hour this Friday? St. James School is an official participant in the WWF Earth Hour. You can show your support at home on Saturday night by switching off your lights at 8:30 pm. Together, we can make a difference!

Bottled Water Free Day!

Today was Bottled Water Free Day around the world! As part of our EcoSchools intiatives and to help our environment, we at St. James School have pledged to stop using single-use plastic bottles in our school. This means that as of today, we are now a bottled water free zone! Congratulations to our EcoTeam who did an amazing job at our school assembly!

Message in a bottle

In preparation for March 10th, Bottled Water Free Day, our EcoTeam wrote a letter to Mayor Watson asking him to make the City of Ottawa a Bottled Water Free Zone. We packed it in one of our new St. James Sharks stainless steel bottles - our message in a bottle was then sent to his office. Please click below to read the letter we sent:

Letter to Mayor Watson

And the Winner is....

Last week the EcoTeam conducted a taste test that put bottled water and tap water to the test. From the 30 people that did the test, 5 chose bottled water, 1 said they could not tell the difference and an astounding 24 chose tap water!!! Congratulations to tap water for being not only the better tasting option but also the environmentally responsible choice!

PS Mrs. Fitzgerald chose tap water too!

Waste Audit!

We have just completed our first waste audit! We collected 24 hours of garbage and recycling and did a visual audit using clear bags and visual estimation. We also weighed the garbage and recorded all of our findings. All together we had 8 bags of garbage with a total mass of 12.8 kg and 6 bags of recycling with a total mass of 12 kg. The majority of the garbage was paper towels and organics (bananas, apples, sandwiches) which can now be put in our green bins.

Here are our average findings:

Garbage Audit

Recyclable containers
7.5 %
Recyclable paper
10.8 %
Food Waste/Organics
45.1 %
Garbage
36.5 %

Recycling Audit

Recyclable containers
17.5 %
Recyclable paper
79.5 %
Food Waste/Organics
2.5 %
Garbage
3.5 %

Our school is doing a fantastic job with recycling, now we need to focus on using our green bins properly. Our goal is to cut our waste by 40% by Earth Day, April 22, 2011. We can do it!

Rethink water

Today we talked about the effects that bottled water are having on our environment. We will be talking about this even more (and even doing our own taste test!) as we prepare for our campaign to make St. James a bottle water free zone. Click on the link below to see the cool video we watched today that helps us learn the real facts about bottled water. Enjoy!

http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

Duck, duck, GOOS

Every classroom now has a GOOS (good on one side) paper bucket. Make sure you put in any paper that has only been used on one side. You can then use it as draft paper for brainstorming, math problem solving, doodling, etc. Did you now that recycled paper requires 64% less energy than making new paper from wood pulp??? So, don't forget to recycle that paper once it is used on both sides!

Don't get Busted!

Our EcoBusters (looking great in their super cool shirts!) started patrolling the halls last week checking to see if the lights were off when there was no one was in the room. Many classes were BUSTED! This week, EcoBusters will be checking lights and making sure that the Black Box is being used properly. Will your class be busted???? Stay tuned to find out!

Amazing work EcoBusters!

Wow! What a fantastic performance today! We are so proud of you! I think our theme song was a big hit - I think we'll have to record it and put it on our website!

Next week is a big week. On Monday we roll out of the green bin program and our EcoBusters will also be out in full force looking for classes that leave their lights on when no one is in the room. Let's hope no one gets busted!

Have a green weekend :)

Put it in the Green Bin

Thanks for making today's EcoTeam meeting so fantastic! We have so many exciting initiatives on the go and are so happy for your enthusiasm! We can't wait until the Principal Awards when we get to introduce them to the whole school! In the meantime, here is the video we watched today - Put it in the Green Bin by an Ottawa band called Loudlove. Enjoy!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

The St. James EcoTeam is looking for newspapers to create origami liners for our classrooms green bins. Classrooms will be collecting copies of the Ottawa Citizen (other flyers and newspapers are too small) and there will also be a drop off box at the school's entrance. This is an ongoing project so please continue to send your paper in on a regular basis. Thank you so much for your support!

The EcoTeam

St. James goes green!

St. James is thrilled to be participating in the city of Ottawa's green bin program. By collecting organic waste in this way, our school can help the City of Ottawa feed the land and not the landfill.

Here is a list of items that can go in the green bin:

Food waste or scraps:
Baking ingredients, herbs and spices
Bread, cereals, crackers and grains
Candy and gum
Chips, popcorn and nuts
Coffee grounds and filters
Cookies, cakes, muffins and pastries
Dairy products (cheese, sour cream)
Dough
Eggs and egg shells
Fruits and vegetables
Jams, Jellies, Marmelades/chutney
Leftover cooking oils, lard, shortening, fat, butter and margarine
Meat, fish, shellfish, poultry, pork bones and scraps
Nuts and shells
Pasta, beans, rice and couscous
Peanut butter
Pet food
Pits (all types)
Salad dressing, mayonnaise, vinegar, sauces, marinades, dips and gravy
Seeds
Tea and tea bags

Yard waste:
Branches, twigs and hedge trimmings
Leaves
Plants and weeds
Grass clippings

Other acceptable items
Animal bedding (e.g. bird and hamster cages)
Barbeque Ashes
Butcher’s meat wrap
Cold fireplace ash
Cotton balls
Dryer lint
Floor sweepings, vacuum bags and vacuum contents
Food-soiled paper towels, napkins and tissues
Food-soiled pizza boxes (pizza boxes should not go in black bin)
Household plants, including soil
Kitty litter
Microwave popcorn bags
Paper coffee cups, plates and muffin wrappers
Pet fur, hair and feathers
Soiled paper, boxboard and cardboard
Sugar, flour and potato paper bags
Waxed paper, cardboard and cold drink cups
Wooden popsicle sticks and toothpicks
Wood chips, sawdust and untreated wood scraps (less than four inches in any dimension)