Happy Earth Day!

This week, St. James is celebrating Earth Week!  This is the perfect time to promote awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment and how we can help do our part by taking care of it!  Here are some ideas for things you can on earth Day, this week and always.  Because remember, everyday is Earth Day :)

•  Visit the Museum of Nature on April 22 - Admission is free!
• Go to the Eco Expo held in Ottawa this weekend: ECO EXPO info
• Less is More - Purchase items with less packaging.
• Paperless Technologies - Invest in an e-reader or tablet
• Go Chemical Free – Adopt a chemical free lifestyle
• Hybrid Light Bulbs – Use hybrid light bulbs in your home and office
• Green Energy – Advocate the use of sustainable, renewable, clean energy.
• Recycling – Make sure you are always recycling properly!
• Eco-Challenges - Convert waste materials into new things that are functional or beautiful, or both.
• Sustainable Reading - Plant a new tree for every book you read
• Earth Day Movie - Check out Disneynature’s Chimpanzee Movie at a theater near you
• Green Transportation – Walk, ride or bike - Skip the car!
• Plant a Tree or Garden – Green your environment with trees, gardens and flowers.
• Turn off the lights – Turn off all unnecessary lights
• Pick up the Garbage - Spend some a couple hours picking up litter at your local park, river or highway

Earth Month is here!

Hope you all participated in Earth Hour at home! I know in my own classroom that some of you even had special Earth Hour parties! Thanks for being so committed to the environment, it is because of your generation that we will be able to start healing the damages we have already caused!

April 22 is Earth Day, but why focus on only one day when we could focus on the whole month! For the top 10 actions to help the environment, visit:
Earth day Canada

Earth Hour is coming!

Did you know that we are participating in Earth Hour next Friday? You can show your support at home on Saturday March 31 by switching off your lights from 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm. Together, we can make a difference!

To join Team Earth Hour visit:
Team Earth

National Sweater Day

On Feb 9th, St. James students and staff will be putting on our favourite sweaters and turning the heat down a few degrees to help WWF take action against climate change, and work toward a sustainable future.

By rethinking how we use energy and how much we use, we can make a big impact on climate change. If every Canadian lowered the heat a few degrees this winter, it'd be like taking 300,000 vehicles off the road!
So wear that sweater and make your Grandmother proud!

To see the video we saw in our assembly today or to book your own Granny call, visit:

http://www.sweaterday.ca/

Waste Audit Results!

This week, our school conducted our first waste audit of the year. 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 2 bags of garbage with a total mass of 4.05 kg and 4 bags of recycling with a total mass of 3.2kg.

While we are doing a great job overall, there were some BIG problems.  Some of the recycling was contaminated because people are not emptying their juice boxes or milk cartons.  When you throw your juice box in the blue bin, it must be emptied first and the straw must be thrown in the garbage.  Milk cartons must always be rinsed out and emptied before going in the blue bin.  One of our recycling bags even has to be thrown in the garbage because of contamination.  There was liquid everywhere and we even found half a banana in this blue bin.  If we all do our part, we can make sure that we are recycling properly 100% of the time. 

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!