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.
About 18% of elementary school sandwiches are wrapped in Aluminum foil. This data came from a survey in a New Rochelle Elementary School lunchroom. Every child was surveyed on how its lunch was packaged. 
We found of the 850 children surveyed, about 55 % brought lunch from home, the others bought lunch in school. That is about 470 children. Only 6% of these children were completely waste free, meaning they brought all food and drink in reusable containers. Another 16% had some sort of reusable container, either a bottle or a sandwich box , 18% had their lunch wrapped in aluminum foil, of which half had that aluminum wrapped sandwich again in a small plastic bag. So close to 80 sheets of aluminum were used every day in just one school.
Let’s look at what Aluminum is and how it is mined.
About 7 percent of the earth’s crust is aluminium, making it the third-most abundant element after oxygen and silicon. Aluminium production starts with the raw material bauxite.
Bauxite is a mineral found mostly in a belt around the equator. Bauxite, containing 15-25 percent aluminium, is the only ore that is used for commercial extraction of aluminium today.
The bauxite occurs mostly in the tropics, in horizontal layers normally beneath a few meters of overburden . The layers are usually mixed with various clay minerals, iron oxides and titanium dioxide. It is the iron that gives bauxite a deep red color.
This is the process of mining.
Industry claims that it is mitigating the devastating effects of strip mining huge surfaces, but evidence is ample that mitigation as well as environmental control during mining is lax or non existent.
Tailing ponds is another source for environmental problems.
75% of all Aluminum foil used in the US is for single use food wrapping, and ends up in landfills.
So your child’s sandwich can contribute to global warming. Maybe there is a better solution?
Food waste is around 40% of all waste from households, it is made up of mainly water, thus it is heavy. Garbage cost is calculated by weight. So all this water is costing the tax payer dearly.
Westchester’s garbage is being collected by the municipalities, brought to one of the several transfer stations within the county and from there it is transported in big trucks to the incinerator in Peekskill.
So basically, we are using fossil fuels (garbage trucks get about 2.6 miles per gallon of diesel fuel) to truck water 50 miles north?
The far better solution would be to sort out all that water laden food waste and actually compost it. Combine food waste with yard waste and nature will give us black gold, aka compost.
The absolute best way is to do it right at home. 
Have a little bin next to your sink and sort out all your food waste (no bones or meats though, home composters can’t handle that, commercial ones can)
And place that food waste in a ratio of 1 food waste to 3 leaves or woodchips into a composter. It can be a home made one, 
or a commercially available one like these. And the rest is done by mother nature. Turning the mixture once in a while will introduce oxygen and thus help the bacteria to do a more efficient job. 
A few weeks later you will have lovely compost that can be used in your garden.
Most people are afraid that composting will be smelly or attract rodents. With all in life, if it is done right, there is none of that.
Business of RecyclingTune in to Pivot and watch an office of eccentric 20-somethings try to clean up the world’s trash.
Eastchester’s Ann Hutchinson Elementary School has just been awarded the Green Ribbon Award.
This award acknowledges the school’s achievements in taking a comprehensive approach to green schools. The areas encompassed by the award include reduced environmental impact and costs, improved health and wellness, and effective environmental and sustainability education. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that The Anne Hutchinson School is a model of excellence and achievement in these Pillars for all other schools to follow.
Ann Hutch was commended for the school’s commitment to environmental stewardship, health, and sustainability and for inspiring our entire school community to aim high.
Dave O’Neil , the 5th grade teacher and driving force behind this wonderful program has been invited to celebrate Ann Hutch’s accomplishments during a n
ational recognition event on July 22nd, 2014 in Washington D.C.
This school is following the School lunch Recycling Program and thanks to Dave O’Neil has been showing off its remarkable success to other schools in Westchester. This school truly buzzes with green energy. We had several organized tours and many districts are inspired to also implement the program. Make no mistake, the students are fully in-charge of the program and the tour. Be prepared to have 4th or 5th grade students tell you all about saving the world, how and what to recycle, how and what to compost and what compost is all good for. If weather permits, one even gets to view the butterfly garden, adjacent to some of the compost bins.
The Ann Hutch Website has the following write up about the Award
“I would like to acknowledge and thank Dave O’Neil, fifth grade teacher for spearheading our initiative to recycle and compost, Vidya Bhat, reading specialist for co-writing the Green Ribbon Award Application, and John Condon for ensuring that our facility follows all the guidelines for energy efficiency. Most of all, I am grateful to the students and staff of the Anne Hutchinson school for working together to produce a sustainable and healthy school environment, ensuring the environmental literacy of all our graduates….it truly “takes a village”. “
Over 50,000 communities world wide have woken up to the fact that single use plastic bags are BAD!
Bad for the environment, bad for the municipalities, bad for the tax payers.
They never biodegrade, they clog up sewer systems, they hang decoratively from trees, they get into our food chain, they kill animals, and there are thousands more reasons why they are bad.
However most single use plastic ban legislation does not cover the plastic produce bags that are commonly used to package produce.
Unfortunately these plastic produce bags are often mistaken for candy by the consumer. I have seen shoppers pulling on that roll with such vigor, taking 10-20 bags at a time, to then package up in each bag one bundle of already plastic wrapped bananas, and one plastic wrapped ice berg lettuce head. And most don’t use all bags they pre-pulled, and leave them laying in their cart for the wind to carry off. No thought.
Fortunately, there is a WAY better solution.
Mothering Mother, a company founded by Pelham Resident Sydney McInnes, has tackled just 
that problem. Their cotton reusable bags help to make the commitment to health with reusable produce bags, bulk bags and totes. Shopping with cotton gives a gentle, ongoing reminder to eat well, for your health and the health of the planet. Bag single use plastic habits once and for all!
Check out their website at MotheringMother.com
This is from a few years ago. Every day I walked by this part of the woods and it bothered me to no end to see all this garbage. So, I donned some gloves on my little trash troopers, and off we went to save the world. The kids were so proud afterwards and the newspaper even picked up the story.
(PS: we emptied the bags into the recycling can afterwards, the DPW crew gave me a LOOK when they emptied all these beer and wine bottles from my recycling can)
In January of 2014, I gave this speech to the New Rochelle BOE reminding them yet again, that Styrofoam is BAD and that the lack of district wide recycling is costing the tax payer huge money. This is not a new tune, for three years, without fail I have been singing this tune and slowly but surely things moved.
It started with Mr Quinn finally admitting that recycling is needed (June of 2012), to him admitting that we need to be better at it by sending out a memo to remind all staff about the recycling laws in January 2013. I guess, he was tired of my bi-weekly speeches and constant emails with pictures of recyclables in the trash at the different New Rochelle schools.
In September of 2013, after my speech about Barnard not having ever used their recycling container and Isaac Young using theirs to collect water, Ms Brickle finally asked to put this topic on the agenda.
In January of 2014, despite my regular pushing, still nothing has been set. So I presented this speech to them.
This speech was the tipping point for Dr Korostoff to take decisive action. By April of 2014 Styrofoam was abandoned in 3 pilot schools, food waste composting and full source separation was established and garbage went down from 22 bags to a mere two handfuls.
And with that came the realization that a complete waste management revamp, as I had lobbied for for years, is not only possible, but advisable.
The plan is to have the other schools join the different environmental programs by September, as well as have the current garbage system completely revamped to allow for source separated material disposal, while saving the tax payer close to $500.000.
This shows that Environmental Change CAN come very fast with decisive leaders.
We Future Cycle 