Roots and Shoots Video

The perfect description of the Roots and Shoots philosophy by Jane Goodall herself.

Recycling Update

As you know, our school's recycling has been a main topic for this year's Roots and Shoots club. Our goal is to raise our total waste disposal from 35% recycling to 45-50% by the end of the school year in June. So far, we have spoken to the head of Facilities, a representative from our waste management company Sustainable Waste Management, the Middle School principal, and the Middle and High School Student Councils. We told the Student Councils about our findings on the cafeteria recycling and how the recycling is being contaminated by food waste. We decided that our best solution was to have students stand by the bins and help other students to choose the correct ones. This program will start next week and go on for a total of two weeks because that is about the right amount of time to create a habit. Our principal also spoke about not contaminating the recycling bins in a whole school assembly earlier in the week. Hopefully we can keep the recycling from becoming contaminated and raise awareness among students on how and why to recycle.

Pond Maintenance #2

Since it's getting warmer outside, we've been able to go down to the pond again. Unfortunately we have no pictures, but hopefully we can add some soon. Because of all the dry weather, the water level in the pond is very low. However, we still seemed to be able to find quite a few creatures when the science classes went pond dipping. We were very happy to see that the area we raked in the winter was still free of leaves and hopefully it will be until the fall.

We were advised not to rake leaves out of the bottom of the pond because there was a danger of disturbing newt eggs. Instead, we continued to rake leaves away from the sides of the pond to keep them from falling in. It's especially important to do this now that the water levels are so low because we don't want the pond to completely fill up and become more overgrown.

Recycling at School

Recycling at our school has been an issue for a while, with a large percentage of waste going to the incinerator every year. As a Roots and Shoots club, we decided to take action against this! We met with the Head of Facilities to discuss what we can do.

We learned that a company called Sustainable Waste Management manages the waste from the school. They supply recycling and garbage bins and pick up all the waste to recycle or dispose of. The school gets reports every month to show how much waste was produced and what has been done to it. The main reason for the low recycling percentage is contamination of recycling with food waste. We agreed that the best way to combat this is to raise awareness about what goes in each bin. We will be meeting a representative from the company soon to discuss how to do this, but some ideas are to:

Have club members stand next to the bins and tell people which bin to choose
Have clearer marking on the bins (this has already been taken care of by Facilities; there are now signs with the name of the waste on the bin)
Make announcements to remind students that they need to pay attention to recycling
Find ways to reduce the trash produced

Our recycling target by the end of the year is 45-50% of total waste (a 10-15% increase). Stay tuned to hear if we have met our goal!

Click here for the Sustainable Waste Management website.

The green bins are for food waste, the black ones are for

general waste. Recycling bins are not pictured.

Roots and Shoots Event

On March 3rd, we had the honor of attending the Roots and Shoots awards event along with several other schools, Roots and Shoots supporters, and Dr. Jane Goodall herself! We were able to visit representatives from different Roots and Shoots clubs and heard about some amazing projects. After the event, we heard a very interesting and inspirational speech from Dr. Jane. Among other topics, she spoke about her love of animals even as a young child, her work with chimpanzees, and the importance of inspiring people to make a difference. We were very excited to receive a Bronze Award and be able to attend this amazing event!

Roots and Shoots Awards!

We were very excited to be invited to the Roots and Shoots award ceremony with Dr. Jane Goodall! You can see our application here. This is a great opportunity to meet a very influential conservationist and we are honored to have been invited (for a second time!) Stay tuned for more information on how the event goes.

Library Patio

Today, before working on some items for our information table, we checked how the library patio garden was looking. First, we looked for the bulbs we had planted earlier in the year (see previous post). We were excited to see that the alliums as well as some muscari had sprouted. The crocuses are already in full bloom! If you would like to grow bulbs in your own garden, it's not too late to plant summer-blooming flowers such as dahlias, lilies, or gladiolus. We also filled the bird feeder and noticed how quickly the birds came! Winter and early spring are an important time to feed birds as there are not as many natural sources of food at this time.

Some potted crocuses

Muscari sprouts

A few of the alliums we planted

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