Tag Archives: environmentaleducation

White Plains Eastview students are back to recycling with ease

October 27, 2021 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Lunch at White Plains Eastview school is a well oil machine. Students come in at three lunch periods, get their lunch with hot and cold lunch options and some grab and go components and sit down at their designated table with clear plexiglass individual dividers between each other. Mask rules are strictly enforced and students are only allowed to take the mask off, when seated at their table.

After lunch, students put on their mask and go to the recycling station to sort their lunch waste away. They are calm, relaxed and well versed in what they need to do.

We Future Cycle is proud to be the White Plains School districts recycling coordinator now for 6 years and while the pandemic with its changed packaging requirements made lunch service more challenging, it is a pleasure to see with what normalcy the students sort their waste.

Eastview’s custodial staff is very helpful and keep the stations neat and organized.

It takes a village to raise a child and Eastview is showing that a school community can raise environmental literate students and they make it look easy!

Elmsford joins the WeFutureCycle program

October 27, 2021 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

4 lbs of garbage, that is all that was generated in the Alexander Hamilton High School in Elmsford. One small bag! Down from over 100 lbs in 9 bags. All the remaining material is either compostable or recyclable.

Students watched a WeFutureCycle presentation to learn about the detrimental effects of garbage on our environment and ultimately on life on this planet. They learned that small changes in their daily life can make a huge difference.

Did you know that if one just separates the recyclables from the non recyclables from the compostables, suddenly a 95% of reduction can be had. And it is not just the benefit of reduction of garbage, but it is also the capturing of the resources. The food waste will be composted into nutrient rich soil and the recyclable packaging material will generate resources for the county.

We interviewed some of the students after learning about the program and sorting their lunch for the first time . All of them said that they were surprised to see how little effort it takes to make a difference, and how just a tiny bit of personal commitment can change the world.

Mt Vernon Graham first graders study worms and their importance in this world

January 29, 2020 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Imagine 30 first graders and one bin of worms? Well, We Future Cycle has been hired to bring sustainability programs to the district. In addition to the hands on sorting in the lunchroom, we go into the classrooms to teach students about other environmental aspects. One of my personal favorite is going into a first grade class with a worm bin.

Students learn the importance of all life, not matter how little, no matter how weird. Did you know that worms breathe through their skin? And they are hermaphrodites? And they don’t lay eggs, nor live babies, but cocoons containing two to three live worms.

Students learned about muscle functions and it is cutest to see them feel their own biceps flexing to understand the interaction of muscles to achieve movement.

Getting up close and dirty with a handful of worms allowed them to observe the muscle movements, check out size differences and stare intently at the translucent tail section of the worm to get a glimpse of the internal castings. (for the intrepid reader…castings are worm poop)

Graham’s first graders now know that our world would not be the same without worms.

By the end, every worm had a name.

White Plains students examine organic and inorganic materials in the environment

January 29, 2020 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

“How does bread interact with water?” that was the question Mamaroneck Avenue School second graders had to answer in a slightly messy, hands-on science experiment. Followed up by “How does plastic interact with water?”.

Learning about organic and inorganic materials and how these interact in the environment with water and wind was the basis for We Future Cycle’s presentation to second graders.

Students learned about the problems related to littering. They learned that plastic does not break down in the environment and lasts forever and effects wild life as it enters the food chain.

Watching a video about how the street litter makes it through our rain water sewer systems into the ocean and just how big the plastic problem is was eye opening to them. Footage of divers swimming through a soup of floating garbage made them collectively groan. And seeing animals dying from ingesting plastic made this problem personal to them.

Each class started a lively discussion on how every student can be the solution to the problem. Each student had brilliant ideas and wrote about them in their daily workbook.

We Future Cycle’s motto is “Creating a generation of kids that care” and these MAS students are an inspiration to all.

Mt Vernon Hamilton first graders examine the role of worms in the environment

December 18, 2019 wefuturecycle 1 Comment

Nothing is more fun than going into a classroom with a worm bin and teaching first graders about how every living being has a really important job to do.

The initial reactions of the little ones is a long drawn out “uuuhhhhh”, when I show them pictures of my worms and tell them how much I love them. They usually look at me with disbelief. And then they learn about all the fabulous things that only worms can do for us, and without that, our world would truly be in dire straits.

Students learned how worms breathe and upon learning that it is through their skin, they all rubbed their arm in disbelief. They learned about the function of muscles and it was very cute to watch them flex their biceps repeatedly, imitating contraction.

They learned about how much worms can eat, how they are the cleaning crew of our world. As they are translucent, one can actually observe the castings ( worm speak for “bathroom business number 2”) pass through their body and students learned how they are connected to healthy soils and plant life. I was blown away that all students knew that plants gave us oxygen (yes they used that word!) and food.

They learned how worms reproduced and all were very busy looking for cocoons and to identify what age a worm might have based on its size. BTW, just in case the intrepid reader wants to know. Worms have both male and female organs, but two worms still need to mate, and then both can have about 5 cocoons per week. Each cocoon contains 2-3 itsy bitsy live worms, that will stay for about 45 days in the cocoon until its time to hatch. It takes 6-10 weeks to grow to adulthood and they have a lifespan of 3-5 years (quite astonishingly long)

The lesson was capped with a wet paper towel in front of the kids, with a handful of worms on it to get up close and personal with them. Students learned that every living being has an important job to do and deserve our respect.

Mt Vernon students start bringing reusable water bottles to school, ditching single serve packaging

December 18, 2019 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

We Future Cycle just implemented its recycling program in Graham Elementary School. Students learned about what happens to garbage and where it goes. They saw pictures of landfills and garbage filled lakes and coastal waters. They also learned about how personal choices in what we buy and what we consume make a difference, every single day.

I usually share with students my personal dislike for single serve juice pouches. The sandwiched material of plastic, aluminum foil and plastic is non-recyclable and such a terrible waste of infinitely valuable aluminum foil.

Most people do not think about the environmental cost of the materials they touch every day.

What does it take to make a water bottle, what does it take to make aluminum foil?

We are usually too busy to just get our days organized and it is so convenient to grab something single serve wrapped. And our language of casually saying “I am just going to throw this away”, as if there was a magic poof that made garbage disappear.

Mount Vernon students are learning that there is no away, when it comes to garbage. It goes either to a landfill or to the incinerator, neither is a good place for our environment, and both have lasting damaging effect to all communities around them.

On day two, after learning about how their actions count and make a difference, I was approached by a group of 4th graders proudly displaying their new reusable water bottles, and saying that -from now- they will make a difference every day !

It was very heart warming. Changing the heart of children is what it takes to make generational change.

New Rochelle Junior becomes Environmental Activist

December 17, 2019 wefuturecycle 2 Comments

Meet Anthony Baker, a Junior at New Rochelle HS. He can remember that at some point in his elementary school times at Trinity elementary school, We Future Cycle got hired and eliminated Styrofoam trays from the schools and started the recycling program that is running in all schools. By now, it is normal behavior for students to walk up to the station and quickly sort their lunch waste into recyclable packaging, non recyclable materials and organic materials to be composted.

Anthony has recently decided to become more active and fight for even more change. He went to a recent Board of Education meeting to present the need to remove even more single use plastics from our lunchrooms.

Recently, he wrote this letter to his former elementary school principal. These are powerful words and I asked his permission to post his letter publicly.

Dear Mr. Hildebrand,

My name is Anthony Baker, I am a junior at New Rochelle High School. You may or may not remember me, I spoke at the board of education meeting at Albert Leonard. I went to Trinity and I am extremely passionate about the environment.

I consider Trinity to be the birthplace of my passion, for it was there that I was taught how to recycle, how to reduce, and how to reuse. Trinity was the first place I was exposed to environmental issues and it was the first place that I became aware of the planet on which we live. I remember watching a brainpop video in my second grade CILA class about climate change; I remember feeling scared, and hopeless.

I remember when I used to be served lunch on styrofoam trays in the Trinity cafeteria, I always used to use my plastic fork to poke holes in my tray. I realize now that this whole picture was just wrong. Now our cafeterias are void of styrofoam but this picture has two parts. Not just styrofoam but also plastic. Plastic is the cancer of our dying world. Our planet is infested with tumors of plastic, slowly choking her organs, day after day after day. I wonder how much longer our planet can even sustain itself with our plastic output. But this factor of fear, this image of destruction, this is what deters so many from action. We all fall into the closed mentality that it is a problem that is too big to fix; we feel guilty, we feel like victims. And at the worst, we are forced to recognize our own error. Our collective human error. We share a sense of mutual guilt with one another. We are afraid to be called out and we are afraid to call out. But now more than ever, we need to call out. We need to scream, we need to shout.

When I spoke to the board of education about plastic output I spoke with genuine concern. I spoke because I was scared. I spoke because I saw something happening that was wrong. And I speak now because I continue to see a practice that is detrimental to ecological stability and the welfare of our human ecosystem.

This practice is the distribution of plastic utensils. I believe it is time that we at the very least consider the thought of a world in which New Rochelle Public Schools do not supply students with plastic utensils. A world where we use metal utensils not just at home, but at school too.

This is not an ambitious idea, it is not a new idea, it is simply the way things used to be. It may seem outlandish to some, but that is simply because we have become accustomed to a world of single use and a world of disposability.

With this, I am asking that you consider a motion for a plastic utensil free Trinity Elementary School. I believe that we have to start somewhere. No matter how small the change is, it is still change. And every step further into the direction of progress gives my generation a little more hope for our future. One school sets the precedent for another, 2 schools set the precedent for a district. A district sets the precedent for a county. And a county sets the precedent for a state. It is a domino effect that must begin somewhere, and it has already begun in a small town in Minnesota. I am hoping that you will be open to consider change.

Styrofoam vanished because someone was brave enough to call for it to be removed. I am hoping the same can happen with plastic.

In the end, I am simply a kid. A junior at New Rochelle High School. But I will not rest, I will not be silent until I see change.

Sincerely,

Anthony Baker

On behalf of my humanity

Mt Vernon Grimes school has only 8 lbs left for garbage, a 96% diversion rate

December 9, 2019 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Letter to Grimes School Parents:

We are so excited to share with you that Grimes Elementary School has taken a giant leap toward reducing our environmental footprint and is going green. The students are on the forefront of this exciting new project.

Last week, the children learned in class by class presentations that over 90% of their lunch waste is actually either compostable or recyclable, if it was just sorted out. They also learned about the problems around garbage and that there is no “away” on this earth, when we talk about “throwing something away”. They learned that Westchester’s garbage goes to the incinerator in Peekskill and gets burnt and creates air pollution.

Your children might share with you as their parents that most packaging made out of glass, all hard and rigid plastics, cartons and juice boxes and metals like soda can, aluminum foil and soup/coffee cans are fully recyclable if they are just placed into the correct bin. And to their biggest surprise, students learned that even their left over milk and left over food can be recycled. Only soft plastic such as chip bags, wrappers, plastic baggies, juice pouches are non recyclable and have to be discarded into the trash.

We Future Cycle, a 501 c3 not for profit company, was hired recently by the district to bring this program to all of Mt Vernon schools. The organisation has successfully implemented environmental education and recycling programs in many Westchester school districts . And Grimes is the 5th Mount Vernon school to implement the program.

Your children are now learning a new breakfast and lunch routine, and they took to it like fish to water. Instead of throwing all of their lunchwaste into one big garbage pail, thus generating over 15 bags of trash every single lunch, they are now walking up to one recycling station and are carefully emptying their containers and sorting them into recycling, compost or non-recyclable.

was implemented — daily garbage bags outside the school before the We Future Cycle program

On their first day, Grimes has reduced its garbage from 189 lbs down to a mere 8 lbs, a 96% reduction. Please join me in celebrating this wonderful achievement for our children and their future in a greener world.

This is AP Lucille Martir, easily holding up the single quarter bag of non recyclable garbage left, after the students sorted their waste for the first time.

20191203_140240 — AP Lucille Martir easily holding the remaining 8 lbs of trash, a 96% reduction

Mt Vernon Graham school diverts 97% of its waste into compost and recycling

December 8, 2019 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

Mount Vernon Graham school used to produce 15 bags of trash every day, and custodial staff had to bring each bag through a long underground tunnel , up some stairs to the street. That alone was a good work out.

Well, check out Dr McGregor , Principal of Graham school, lifting the remaining garbage with one arm.

Graham school just recently joined the We Future Cycle recycling program, the 6th of Mount Vernon schools and it diverted a record of 97% of its waste into compost and recycling. A mere 5 lbs were non recyclable soft plastics.

Students learned in auditorium and classroom presentations that there is no “away” in this world. They learned about garbage, pollution and how it all effects us right here, every day. Shocked faces looked at birds with their bellies full of plastic because people threw their waste carelessly away.

Sixth, 7th and 8th grade classes were together in the auditorium and it was so quiet one could hear a pin drop and collective moaning arose when they saw pictures of how plastic in the environment effects animals. I actually had a 7th grader come to me and hug me and thank me for showing her how she can make a difference. It was very heartwarming.

We Future Cycle is usually 2 weeks in the lunchroom actively helping the students to learn about what materials get diverted and we use that time to educate them even more. From day one, we had excited helpers and students that came to me to share how they are now making a difference every day.

Graham students are now the generation of kids that cares. Way to go!

Mt Vernon Lincoln 2nd graders study material interaction in the environment

December 8, 2019 wefuturecycle Leave a comment

What happens to stuff when we throw it “away”?

Walking through the fictional example of sitting on a park bench, eating a sandwich and throwing the left over and the plastic bag into the environment, students learned about how organic and inorganic materials interact with water and wind.

Students learned about the detrimental effects of littering to our animal world, in particular the marine life. Students reacted with utter shock to learn that the litter on our streets goes unfiltered with the rain water into our oceans and there it is mistaken for food by marine life that will die a painful and slow death.

Students pledged to never litter and to be the change agents of their community to educate them about caring for this world.