Solid Waste Reduction
Riderwood students have undertaken a number of initiatives to reduce solid waste at the school. Below is a summary list followed by additional details:
Riderwood students have undertaken a number of initiatives to reduce solid waste at the school. Below is a summary list followed by additional details:
- Trash-Free Lunch Days
- Terracycle Collection
- Recycling Monitors in Classrooms
- Student Council Recycling Stations
- Art Projects Using Recycled Materials
- Field Day Reusable Water Bottles
- Training Kindergarten to be Trash Free
Trash-Free lunch Days
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: April 2012 - ongoing
What a wonderful student-led initiative this has been! An enthusiastic 3rd grade Girl Scout troop (Troop 1953) at Riderwood challenged the school to be trash-free during Earth Week 2012 and a new Riderwood tradition was born! Every month since then, we have had a Trash-Free Lunch Day competition where homerooms compete to have the highest percentage of their students be trash-free. Parent volunteers check the students' lunches that day, give out "I'm Trash Free!" hand stamps, and tally the results. This is a FIERCE competition, as the prize is a gaudy, door-size Trash-Free Champs ribbon awarded to the winners. (See Celebration.)
Besides all the fun of the competition, the students are making a real impact on the environment. The custodial staff keeps track of the numbers of trash bags filled during trash-free lunch days as opposed to normal days, and they are happy to report that we reduce the number of trash bags from 12 to 4. That's approximately a 66% reduction in trash! Students are encouraged to be trash-free as often as possible, not just on competition days.
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: April 2012 - ongoing
What a wonderful student-led initiative this has been! An enthusiastic 3rd grade Girl Scout troop (Troop 1953) at Riderwood challenged the school to be trash-free during Earth Week 2012 and a new Riderwood tradition was born! Every month since then, we have had a Trash-Free Lunch Day competition where homerooms compete to have the highest percentage of their students be trash-free. Parent volunteers check the students' lunches that day, give out "I'm Trash Free!" hand stamps, and tally the results. This is a FIERCE competition, as the prize is a gaudy, door-size Trash-Free Champs ribbon awarded to the winners. (See Celebration.)
Besides all the fun of the competition, the students are making a real impact on the environment. The custodial staff keeps track of the numbers of trash bags filled during trash-free lunch days as opposed to normal days, and they are happy to report that we reduce the number of trash bags from 12 to 4. That's approximately a 66% reduction in trash! Students are encouraged to be trash-free as often as possible, not just on competition days.
Terracycle Collection
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: School years 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13
Recognizing what a great opportunity the Terracycle program presents for upcycling items that would normally be trash, AND the chance to earn money for charity, the Parcover family initiated and maintained a successful Terracycle collection program at the school. They worked with a small group of other families to coordinate the collection and shipment of juice pouches and chip bags. Over the three years, students kept 61,898 juice pouches and 7,322 snack bags out of the landfill.
This program earned a total of $1,705 which was donated to various charities on behalf of the school, including UNICEF, Camp Sunrise, Women for Women International, Towsontowne Youth Baseball, and Cromwell Valley Park. (See Community Partnerships for student involvement in Cromwell Valley Park donation.)
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: School years 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13
Recognizing what a great opportunity the Terracycle program presents for upcycling items that would normally be trash, AND the chance to earn money for charity, the Parcover family initiated and maintained a successful Terracycle collection program at the school. They worked with a small group of other families to coordinate the collection and shipment of juice pouches and chip bags. Over the three years, students kept 61,898 juice pouches and 7,322 snack bags out of the landfill.
This program earned a total of $1,705 which was donated to various charities on behalf of the school, including UNICEF, Camp Sunrise, Women for Women International, Towsontowne Youth Baseball, and Cromwell Valley Park. (See Community Partnerships for student involvement in Cromwell Valley Park donation.)
Recycling Monitors in Classrooms
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: Began in Spring 2013, ongoing
Before our Green School initiative, the recycling program at Riderwood was inconsistent. Custodial staff usually threw the contents of the recycling bins away with the regular trash because students didn't sort properly. Now, homerooms have rotating "recycling monitors" who are responsible for checking the recycling bins in their classrooms on a daily basis before dumping them into the bigger recycling cans in the hall. If a recycling monitor finds non-recyclables in the recycling bins, he/she throws the contents away so the class can try again for the rest of the day. This way, it is the students' responsibility for sorting properly.
The Green Team gave each class a laminated sign to hang over its recycling can so students can better learn what is recyclable. The school's TV crew even interviewed the chief custodian on the morning announcements so she could explain how this approach would help the school recycle better. (See Celebration.)
Click here for the Green Team memo sent to teachers explaining the new procedure:
/uploads/1/8/1/3/18132917/gs_recycling_monitor_directions.doc
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: Began in Spring 2013, ongoing
Before our Green School initiative, the recycling program at Riderwood was inconsistent. Custodial staff usually threw the contents of the recycling bins away with the regular trash because students didn't sort properly. Now, homerooms have rotating "recycling monitors" who are responsible for checking the recycling bins in their classrooms on a daily basis before dumping them into the bigger recycling cans in the hall. If a recycling monitor finds non-recyclables in the recycling bins, he/she throws the contents away so the class can try again for the rest of the day. This way, it is the students' responsibility for sorting properly.
The Green Team gave each class a laminated sign to hang over its recycling can so students can better learn what is recyclable. The school's TV crew even interviewed the chief custodian on the morning announcements so she could explain how this approach would help the school recycle better. (See Celebration.)
Click here for the Green Team memo sent to teachers explaining the new procedure:
/uploads/1/8/1/3/18132917/gs_recycling_monitor_directions.doc
Student Council Recycling Stations
Grades: All
Number of Students: 21 made the signs, all students see them
Date: May 2013
To reinforce our schoolwide mission to reduce, reuse, and recycle, the Student Council made lots of green posters to adorn all the recycling cans in the hallways and cafeteria. They all had a great time creating and hanging the posters!
Grades: All
Number of Students: 21 made the signs, all students see them
Date: May 2013
To reinforce our schoolwide mission to reduce, reuse, and recycle, the Student Council made lots of green posters to adorn all the recycling cans in the hallways and cafeteria. They all had a great time creating and hanging the posters!
Art Projects Using Recycled Materials
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: Every single day, every single year!
One incredibly creative art teacher + a tight budget for art supplies = art projects using recycled materials every single day! Since Riderwood's 2014 Art Show is Green-themed, students have been creating magnificent works of art with recyclables all year. (See Celebration for several samples.) In the meantime, bins and bins of bottlecaps sorted by color line the hallway outside the art room: the whole school has been recycling bottlecaps to make a wall-sized mural of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night," which promises to be an eye-catching centerpiece of the Art Show on April 29.
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: Every single day, every single year!
One incredibly creative art teacher + a tight budget for art supplies = art projects using recycled materials every single day! Since Riderwood's 2014 Art Show is Green-themed, students have been creating magnificent works of art with recyclables all year. (See Celebration for several samples.) In the meantime, bins and bins of bottlecaps sorted by color line the hallway outside the art room: the whole school has been recycling bottlecaps to make a wall-sized mural of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night," which promises to be an eye-catching centerpiece of the Art Show on April 29.
Field Day Reusable Water Bottles
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: Spring 2013, annually thereafter
Even Field Day is now going Green at Riderwood! For our annual, day-long event of outside games and activities, Field Day coordinators of the past asked parents to supply coolers of bottled water for each classroom. This led to a lot of wasted water, as some kids didn't finish the whole bottle, and excess trash, as many of the bottles were left on the playground or thrown away instead of recycled. That's over 500 water bottles! In 2013, students began bringing their own reusable water bottles to the event. Despite some parents' concerns that the kids would misplace their water bottles during the day, it actually made them more responsible since that was the only water bottle they'd have. Students adjusted easily to the change so this will be standard practice from now on.
Below are pictures of 1st graders with their reusable water bottles at Field Day.
Grades: All
Number of Students: Entire school
Date: Spring 2013, annually thereafter
Even Field Day is now going Green at Riderwood! For our annual, day-long event of outside games and activities, Field Day coordinators of the past asked parents to supply coolers of bottled water for each classroom. This led to a lot of wasted water, as some kids didn't finish the whole bottle, and excess trash, as many of the bottles were left on the playground or thrown away instead of recycled. That's over 500 water bottles! In 2013, students began bringing their own reusable water bottles to the event. Despite some parents' concerns that the kids would misplace their water bottles during the day, it actually made them more responsible since that was the only water bottle they'd have. Students adjusted easily to the change so this will be standard practice from now on.
Below are pictures of 1st graders with their reusable water bottles at Field Day.
Training Kindergarten to be Trash Free
Grades: Kindergarten and 4th
Number of Students: 85
Dates: October 2012, October 2013, and annually thereafter
Girl Scout Troop 1953 originated the idea of Trash-Free Lunch Day in April 2012. They pitched the idea to the principal, appeared on the morning announcements to publicize it, and then afterwards reported the reduction in trash to the school. They also realized that an important step was to make sure the youngest kids in the school had a good foundation for how to be trash-free so they could continue on year after year. So, working in teams, the girls in the troop gave 5-minute trash-free demonstrations to each kindergarten homeroom. Showing themselves to be true leaders, they will make sure that when they graduate this year, another group will carry on the training.
One kindergarten teacher even incorporated the trash-free training into that evening's homework:
"We learned about Trash-Free Lunch day for Friday, Oct. 26th. Discuss what you learned from the presentation. Write a good sentence and illustrate."
/uploads/1/8/1/3/18132917/gs_tfld_training_k_homework.doc
Grades: Kindergarten and 4th
Number of Students: 85
Dates: October 2012, October 2013, and annually thereafter
Girl Scout Troop 1953 originated the idea of Trash-Free Lunch Day in April 2012. They pitched the idea to the principal, appeared on the morning announcements to publicize it, and then afterwards reported the reduction in trash to the school. They also realized that an important step was to make sure the youngest kids in the school had a good foundation for how to be trash-free so they could continue on year after year. So, working in teams, the girls in the troop gave 5-minute trash-free demonstrations to each kindergarten homeroom. Showing themselves to be true leaders, they will make sure that when they graduate this year, another group will carry on the training.
One kindergarten teacher even incorporated the trash-free training into that evening's homework:
"We learned about Trash-Free Lunch day for Friday, Oct. 26th. Discuss what you learned from the presentation. Write a good sentence and illustrate."
/uploads/1/8/1/3/18132917/gs_tfld_training_k_homework.doc