Sunday, April 24, 2011

Earth Week Pledges

During Earth week, each student had a chance to write down a pledge - something that they would try over the next year. Their pledges are now posted in the cafeteria (thanks to the wonderful volunteers Shannon, Cindy, Ada, Margot, and Torin). What small step will you try this year?


Friday, April 22, 2011

Happy Earth Day!

This week we collected hard and soft plastics usually can't be recycled in our curbside cans. Thanks to the Rieke community, we kept 20 huge bags of plastics out of the landfills!


On May 4th, the Tryon Creek Rangers will be coming to the school assembly to talk to the students and help transfer the bags to Farwest Fibers.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Waste-Free Lunch Trash Audit


On April 20th we conducted another lunch waste audit to compare the results between a 'normal' lunch day and a 'waste-free' day. The school reduced their total waste by 19% and food waste by 33%! Here are the findings:


Photos of the waste audit



Mar 11, 2011

Apr 20, 2011

% change

plastics

6

8

+33%

milk containers

10

9

-10%

food

48

32

-33%

styrofoam

4

6

+50%





total weight

68

55

- 19%


worst offenders:

37 unused spork containers

3-4 gallons of milk poured into the waste bin (next time will we weigh the wasted milk)

several untouched bananas/oranges but greatly reduced from the apples in the last audit



Monday, April 11, 2011

International Plastic Quilt Project

How much plastic do you use a week?

The Rieke EcoThink Club collected plastics from their homes for a week and created quilt squares for the International Plastic Quilt Project. The students did a great job and their quilt will be displayed at the school for the next two weeks. It helped us get ready for our plastic recycling drive next week.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Want to Learn More?


Ecothink Lesson 4 – Recycling and Reuse


This week we focused on Recycling and Reuse. The students created a square for the International Plastic Quilt Project and played the Garbage R’s game (recycle, reduce, reuse, reject, or rethink). Please take some time to review what your child learned during the club meeting and check out these websites with them.


Try going to ‘Recycle City’, a website from the EPA

http://www.epa.gov/recyclecity/mainmap.htm


This site has several recycling games and activities for rainy weekends or summer projects:

http://www.accesskent.com/YourGovernment/PublicWorks/pdfs/Reduce-Reuse-Recycle_Activities.pdf


Cut down on your junk mail at

http://www.catalogchoice.org

Have your child find the catalogs that you don’t want and located the customer numbers on the labels to help you opt-out of mailings.


Take the ‘Trash and Climate Change’ challenge

http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/k00-001.pdf


Cut down on baggies use and make a sandwich wrap out of recycled items:

http://www.chicaandjo.com/2010/02/01/fused-plastic-sandwich-wraps/


Saturday, April 2, 2011


Earth week is coming soon!


Rieke EcoThink Club and Tryon Creek State Park will be hosting a plastic recycling drive April 18-22. We will be accepting clean grocery bags, bread/vegetable bags, zip lock and freezer bags, bubble wrap, dry cleaning bags, clam shell/to-go containers, and plastics lids - plastics that are not accepted in the curb-side recycling bins.


Tryon Creek State Park will also be accepting more rigid plastics, media plastics, and cell phones on April 22. For more information, go to:


http://www.fotcsp.org/upload/OPRD_flyer.pdf