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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/

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

Here are our results from our lunch trash audit:

Photos of lunch trash audit

65 pound of garbage in four bags

173 styrofoam trays

6 pounds of plastics

10 pounds of milk containers

48 pounds of food waste!

The worst offenders

- 65 spork containers taken only for the straw

- 53 apples with none or one bite taken out of it

This month we focused on Waste Out of Place and we conducted a lunchroom trash audit. Our results will be posted soon.

If you have a chance, challenge your family to the ‘home trash audit’ to calculate how much waste do you produce in a day. Do you produce more or less than the national average of 4.6 lbs of garbage a day?

Please take some time to review what your child learned during the trash audit and check out some or all of these websites.

Watch ‘Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout’ together from Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEEj1VKq-t8

Download the EPA’s ‘Trash and Climate Change: Planet Protectors Discover the Hidden Reasons to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle’ Activity Book

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

Go on a virtual field trip to a landfill:

http://www.rumpke.com/Landfill/Virtual_Tour.asp

March Late Start Morning Field Trip

We had a great time exploring Tryon Creek State Park with Ranger Karen and Ranger Christal. The kids learned about the importance of fallen trees, searched for 'nursery' logs, and delighted in finding the animals that lived under them. We even were able to see a Great Horned Owl nest and deer tracks.

Photos of the Rieke Tryon Creek hike

Late Start Morning Field Trip

Wednesday March 9th

9am

How does the forest recycle?

Come for a special ranger-guided hike at Tryon Creek State Park

with Rieke Green Team and the EcoThink Club

Sign up in the office or email Jamie (jamie.repasky@gmail.com) if you would like to attend.

We will hike rain or shine so bring boots and a change of clothes!

STUDENT ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS NEEDED!!!!

To make our Rieke “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” music video for Earth Day (set to Jack Johnson’s song ‘3Rs’), we need photos or drawings of:

- taking the bus
- biking
- walking to school
- using cloth bags for groceries
- using reusable lunch containers
- bringing your own water containers
- handing down clothes that don't fit
- growing your own food
- planting native plants
- turning off lights
- turning off your car (idle free zones)
- different types of recycling
- composting
- your family doing a green activity
- ....

Photos of numbers (on signs, cars, buildings, etc):

3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36

Please drop off your art in Ms. Reddekopp’s office mail box or email the photos to jamie.repasky@gmail.com