Who:

We are the Go Green/Environmental Awareness Committee for students sponsored by the PTA.

What:

We are a parent driven committee that volunteers to work with the students grades 1-5.

Our GOAL is to inspire kids to reduce, reuse and recycle (the 3 R's), learn environmental stewardship and appreciate the natural world around us.

How:

• Working in our campus garden and Outdoor Classroom space.
• Holding bi-monthly recess-time activity meetings.
• Celebrating Green Holidays like America Recycles Day and Earth Day.
• Promoting the 3 R's on campus daily as well as at school events.

These activities can continue only with YOUR help!

To volunteer or learn more, please contact:

Kelly Enright enright002@gmail.com or

Lee Ann Cella Mills cellamills@hotmail.com

More About Us: The Green Team has a regular presence on campus by meeting (most) Fridays in our school's garden during the kids' recess. The kids are encouraged to get their hands dirty (and wet) by helping with weeding, planting, and composting. Want to help? Your kids would love to see you in the garden!

We sponsor a GREEN campus during school events by sorting our trash (landfill, compost, recycling) and encouraging families to do this at home too! Did you know if trash is not sorted, it all goes into landfills?! We also encourage our school to choose environmentally friendly purchases for events.

We sponsor daily water bottle and can recycling efforts on campus. This is the main source of revenue for our Green Team and we need your help! Please volunteer.

Outdoor Classroom: Last year the Green Team and Fairlands community mobilized to build the wonderful new Outdoor Classroom space. This is an incredible living classroom environment for our teachers and students to study native California plant species, animal and insect life-cycles, and water conservation (to name a few things). It is also an outdoor environment for our children to have a quiet, inspirational space to promote creative learning.

Our focus this year: The Green Team plans to delve deeper into the REDUCE portion of the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle). Our first Kid's Club meeting in September will be a lunch time

Challenge: Can you bring a completely waste free lunch? That means you must be able to eat, compost, recycle or reuse everything in your lunch.

Tips: 1. Bring a re-usable lunch bag and drink container 2. Bring re-usable snack and meal containers (no ziplocs) 3. No single serving snacks (that is more waste!) 4. Bring utensils that go home with you to be washed and used again and again!

All Items that are recycled at Fairlands :

• *'d items are recycling efforts done within the school only.
• +'d items show where we receive fund for recycling items

+Used ink let cartridges- collected in front office at sign-in table or at recycle centers inside double doors of main office

+Old cell phones- collected at recycle center inside double doors of main office.

+CRV only plastic drink bottles- collected at recycle center inside double doors of main office, blue cans at lunch area, and dumpster next to bike parking. Also, curbside on 1st Wed of every month.

+CRV only aluminum drink cans- collected in blue cans at lunch area and dumpster next to bike parking. Also, curbside on 1st Wed of every month.

+ Used glue sticks and glue bottles- collected at recycle center inside double doors of main office and at each classroom.

+Used pens, markers, and highlighters- collected at recycle center inside double doors of main office and at each classroom.

*Misc. paper- collected at bins in recycle centers inside double doors of main office and in teacher workroom. For school collection only.

*Uneaten vegetables from school lunches- collected for composting in student garden. Cafeteria collection only.

GO Green Library

On the literary front, we have some exciting new books available in the library! Thanks to an environmental grant from the city, we were able to purchase some great books to add to our Go Green collection. Mrs. Peterson has dedicated an entire section near the entrance of the library for books related to environmental awareness, and will be happy to help select ones that interest your children. Check out the latest arrivals in the GO GREEN Library!

Interesting websites to check out:

www.stopwaste.org

www.terracycle.net

Green Team Fun Facts:

-You can save up to 90% of your washer's energy use by washing your clothes in cold water.

-Food from grocery stores can travel up to 1500 miles to get to you. Buying local foods reduces transportation costs and pollution.

-If every family in America replaced one meat based meal a week with a vegetarian one, the energy and pollution saved would be the equivalent of taking more than 5 million cars off US roads.

Natural Play Dough

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cups salt
• 2 tablespoon vegetable oil
• your choice of natural dyes

*brown- 1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons hot water and 1/2 cup of cocoa powder

*fuchsia- 3/4 cup of beet juice ( liquid from canned beets)

*orange- 3/4 cup hot water and 2 tablespoon paprika

*yellow- 3/4 cup hot water and 2 tablespoons turmeric

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour and salt. Pour in the oil and your chosen natural dye and stir well. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 5 minutes. If the clay is too soft, add a bit more flour.

Store the clay in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Green Power Juice recipe

• 1 cup raw spinach leaves
• 3 fresh pitted dates (optional)
• 1 banana
• 1 cup chopped mango
• 1 1/2 cup cold water

Add all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.