We Future Cycle is honored to have its lunchroom recycling program endorsed by Senator George Latimer. He took time from his busy schedule to visit a We Future Cycle Recycling implementation at BMP Ridge Street School in Rye Brook, NY, and he has also met with our team to discuss grant opportunities.
Thank you Senator Latimer for your public support.
We Future Cycle is proud to announce that White Plains will be joining the program.
Under the leadership of the Director of Facilities Frank Stefanelli two pilot schools are starting to source separate and food compost this fall.
We Future Cycle just finished implementing the recycling program at Blind Brook’s BMP Ridge Street Elementary School.
We just received these heartwarming Thank You Notes from the 1st graders for bringing recycling to their school.
We are honored and very touched.
THANK YOU 1st Graders for such wonderful thoughts.
Five eager 5th graders from the Blind Brook’s BMP Ridge Street Elementary school’s Green Team were very proud to present the results from the recent implementation of the We Future Cycle School Recycling Program to Senator George Latimer, BOE President Jeff Diamond and Rye Town Councilwoman Christina Collins.
Everybody listened attentively as the students described how they conducted a waste audit in the lunchroom and learned that Ridge St Elementary school regularly generated 12 large garbage bags weighing a total of 186lbs and Senator Latimer expressed amazement when they shared with him that after source separation only 8lbs of trash are remaining (4% of the total waste). All the other materials are diverted into recycling and composting.
Senator Latimer was also interested in learning how this program could be brought to additional Westchester County schools.
The Blind Brook Board of Education was instrumental in getting the district to adopt the We Future Cycle program and BOE President Jeff Diamond was very pleased to see the system up and running so amazingly well. Councilwoman Christina Collins, who also chairs the Rye Town Sustainability Initiative, has been supportive of the program from the first moment she heard about it and is delighted to see it in action. The Blind Brook PTA sponsored the program in the district, and many PTA members volunteered during the first few weeks to get everything running smoothly. Thank you to everyone for the support!
On April 22nd 2015 at 6:30, the curtain will rise to show the documentary filmed about the Bash The Trash Legacy Project created and supervised by We Future Cycle in the Colonial Elementary School in Pelham. We are so excited and hope you can all join us for this event.
Also shown will be “Devide in Concord”, the tale of the battle to ban the plastic bottle.
The Pelham Picture house is located at 175 Wolfs Ln, Pelham, NY 10803.
We Future Cycle had a vendor table at the Larchmont Green Expo, what a wonderful event. It was very well attended and many visitor were very interested in what we are doing.
Ashley was using magic to lure them to our table (we had a plate with Girl Scout cookies……) and while munching they learned about the program.
Simultaneously we ran a recycling sorting game for the children, and it was very heart warming to see how much some children already knew.
We Future Cycle and The Science Barge are working together to bring Environmental Education to Westchester Schools.
Creating Change is all about showing alternatives. That is exactly the mission of the Science Barge in Yonkers.
The Science Barge is a prototype sustainable urban farm developed by NY Sun Works and acquired by Groundwork Hudson Valley in October, 2008 to be operated as an environmental education center.
The Science Barge greenhouse, floating on the Hudson River, grows an abundance of fresh produce including tomatoes, melons, greens, and lettuce with zero net carbon emissions, zero pesticides, and zero runoff. All of the energy needed to power the Barge is generated by solar panels, wind turbines, and biofuels while the hydroponic greenhouse is irrigated solely by collected rainwater and purified river water, thus operating completely “off the grid.”
It is the only fully functioning demonstration of renewable energy supporting sustainable food production in New York. It is now docked in downtown Yonkers just north of the Yonkers Pier.
Check them out, they are fabulous!
http://www.groundworkhv.org/programs/science-barge/
Sean Adams of WCBS radio recently covered the We Future Cycle implementation at Hastings-on-Hudson schools, featuring We Future Cycle founder Anna Giordano, Hastings’ Hillside Elementary School Assistant Principal Farid Johnson, Facilities Director George Prine, and Food Service Director Alan Levin.
Read and listen to the WCBS AM 880 story here.
With 2014 being such an incredible year we are looking forward to 2015 and the positive change it can bring to Westchester schools.
My personal wish list for 2015 is
1. Implementing We Future Cycle’s School Lunch and Building-Wide Recycling and Composting Program to 10 More School Districts in 2015, even if it is just in one pilot school per district. Implementing these programs is very do-able, but working with experts is critical to ensure a successful implementation. Results will speak for themselves and that will hopefully lead to district-wide implementation in many Westchester School districts.
Just imagine, if one school reduces its garbage from 22 bags per day down to less then 1/4 bag per day, what kind of impact this will have if 10 more districts will join the program. And just imagine all those students going back home to their parents and sharing their enthusiasm to save the world.
2. Creating the First Leaf and Food-Waste Composting Site in Westchester. So far, only very few communities are composting their leaves, most are trucking them to Rockland County at great expense in fossil fuel consumption, labor and heavy equipment on our streets. So far, no community is doing larger scale, organized food waste composting instead nature’s valuable resource is treated as trash, plastic bagged and burnt. The good news is that several communities are now studying how to solve this problem. We are proud to be on the forefront with them.
3. Integrating Sustainability Education into Curriculum. We have done numerous environmental projects with individual schools such as green writing contests, waste free snack education, TerraCycle Ambassador programs, kindergarten recycling sorting games and it shows again and again, that when students are made aware early of their personal ability to create environmental change, that the ripple effect through the community is amazing.
2014 was an action-packed year for We Future Cycle. We are looking proudly upon multiple TV, radio and other news outlet coverage stories of the environmental programs that we offer.
We thank New Rochelle’s Interim Superintendent, Dr. Jeffrey Korostoff, for boldly going where no one had gone before by fully supporting the program and implementing it in all of New Rochelle’s Elementary Schools.
We thank Maureen Caraballo, Treasurer for Hastings-on-Hudson School District, for being the major force to bring the program to Hastings’ schools.
We thank Paul Feiner, Supervisor of the Town of Greenburgh, for endorsing us to bring the program to all of Greenburgh’s school districts.
We thank the White Plains Sustainability Committee to endorse us and to recommend the program to White Plains schools. We are very pleased and excited to be presenting this program to the White Plains Administration in January.
We thank the City Council of New Rochelle for endorsing We Future Cycle programs and for working with us to bring the first Food Waste Composting Site to Westchester.
We thank Joseph Carvin, Supervisor of the Town of Rye, for endorsing the program and affiliating with us. Mr. Carvin is also founder of the organization “One World, United & Virtuous.”
We thank Catherine Parker, Westchester County Legislator and Chair of the Committee for Environment and Energy, for featuring our program at the Board of Legislators and the Westchester Environmental Summit, as well as for her continuous and outspoken support. She is the major force behind creating a Westchester-based solution for food waste composting.
We thank the Columbia University Capstone Program for recommending the implementation of the We Future Cycle School recycling program as part of the Zero Waste Initiative to the Town of Mamaroneck, Village of Mamaroneck, and the Village of Larchmont.
We thank the Greenburgh Nature Center for offering a meeting venue to present the program as well as many other earth-saving and thought-provoking environmental presentations.
We thank County Legislator Sheila Marcotte and James Maisano for honoring us with a Proclamation for creating and implementing the program at New Rochelle Trinity School. New Rochelle’s Trinity Elementary School is truly a leader, one of the first schools to implement with an exceptional administration.
We thank the Pelham Sustainability Committee EcoPel for featuring the program and for their efforts to bring it to the Pelham schools.
We thank the Westchester Municipal Offcials Association for endorsing the program and bringing it back as recommendation to their communities.
We thank all the people that support us in our work to bring sustainability and environmental education into the schools as a daily learning experience, so we can raise environmentally-literate children.
Charles Kettering said these famous words: “The world hates change, yet is has been the only thing that brought progress.” We could not agree more.
We Future Cycle 