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.
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.
Well, check out Dr McGregor , Principal of Graham school, lifting the remaining garbage with one arm.
They were hesitant when offered to smell compost as they still had food waste as a negative thought in their head. But after the first, courageous kid took the proverbial nasal plunge and took a sniff and declared with a big smile : It smells just like dirt and nature!, they all smelled it and agreed that it makes so much more sense to compost our food waste into soil, then treating it as trash and either landfilling or burning it.
How does that garbage get there, you might ask? Well, not by people physically throwing it into the water. Instead, all of our streets are connected to the ocean by their rain water sewers. The ocean starts right at your home street. That is because anything and everything that is on the street and gets washed with the rain water into these sewers will absolutely, positively end up in the ocean. There is no filtering system between the street and the ocean.
The auditorium at New Rochelle Trinity school was packed with excited 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. There was a hushed silence with raw anticipation. Up front were 4 dignitaries and the assistant principal welcoming the kids to the auditorium.
This writing contest is sponsored by the family of the late Nina Chin. Ms Chin was a lifelong educator and believed strongly that good writers are good learners and to encourage her own students to write, she sponsored every year a writing contest from her money. Her family loved this tradition that they chose to continue it in her memory and every year one or two New Rochelle schools are chosen to become recipients of this award. Anna Giordano, from We Future Cycle, the organization that is hired by the New Rochelle school district to bring sustainability programs and education to all 11.500 students is the administer of this award and is always delighted to help schools run this exciting contest.