2008-2009 Green Team Year in Review

April was definitely an exciting month for going green at Robious Elementary School. Our recycling program continues to be an amazing success: our students have diverted more than 500 pounds of classroom waste from the landfill again this month! The year to date recycling total exceeds 3,500 pounds. Remember, this is just classroom recycling. Although we’re not weighing the recycling coming out of the resource rooms, the cafeteria, or the front office, those spaces are recycling, too. According to TFC’s estimates, we’ve probably recycled closer to 7,000 pounds this year, school-wide. Earth Day was a big event at Robious Elementary this year. In fact, we celebrated it all week long, in tandem with Turn off the TV Week. Our students grew a “green commitment” tree, and brought in leaves stating what each family is doing at home to go green, participated in the “green hour” challenge, dressed in green spirit wear, participated in a “walking bus” day, and closed out the week with a fabulous potluck dinner at

Robious Landing Park. We hope your family was able to participate in some or all of these events! On April 28, I had the pleasure of speaking to the 4th graders about “green building”. Much like my experience back in February with the 3rd graders, I was absolutely amazed by their depth of knowledge and the insightfulness of their questions. Part of our discussion was about motion detectors, and how different motion s e n s i n g t e c h n o l o g i e s worked. When we started to talk about ultrasonic sensors, they shared a bit with me about how echolocation works and which animals use it to hunt and communicate. Wow! They were clearly there to get certain information, and I sure hope I lived up to their expectations. During the evening of April 28, Julia Lain (3rd grade), Austin Tuck (4th grade), Casey Perkins (assisted by Megan Gardner) and Will Hostetler (5th grade) eloquently addressed the School Board, along with students from Bettie Weaver ES and JB Watkins ES, explaining what this year’s recycling program has meant to them, to their families, and to their education. We learned that the three schools combined have kept more than 10 tons of waste out of the landfill this year. The students also took our pilot program’s recycling rates and considered how much waste would stay out of the landfill if all 58,000 CCPS students recycled in the classroom. The answer? An amazing 200 tons! The School Board’s response was very positive and we are hopeful that this is the start of something good, green, and permanent county-wide. As always, if you have any ideas about how we can continue to green Robious Elementary School, or if you want to help me out with Green Team initiatives next year, please feel free to email me directly. I would love to hear from you!

Bryna Dunn

brynadunn@comcast.net