Stormwater Research Trip

It was the perfect rainy day to study what was happening
with stormwater in each of the actual research spaces.
Here students go to look at what is happening as the stormwater
travels through the layers of the soil and which
pollutants are removed through filtration.

Last week some of our student Green Team Leaders had the opportunity for a day of learning at the WSU Stormwater Research Center in Puyallup.  We had a great day with students from elementary, middle, junior high and high school!  Here is a post from one of our middle school students.

Learning about stormwater was a great experience and I want to teach and inspire other kids at my school about how important stormwater is and what you can do to solve storm water problems. Our mission is to reduce impacts of stormwater on streams, lakes, wetlands, and coastal areas through effective research-based application of green stormwater infrastructure. Stormwater is water that runs off roofs and roads that can affect how rivers and streams look and the life in them. Some ways to prevent stormwater is to have a green roof to soak up water, a rain water collecting system, having multiple rain gardens, and having permeable concrete so there is no standing water that can flow and flood rivers and lakes that have living organisms in them. Stormwater is a big issue in the world we just need to have solutions to prevent it and a team that can inspire others and work together to understand the science if stormwater.”

Thanks so much to Brody for this Post!

More details on the Green Globe Award

Example of the Up-Cycled Products - 3 ring binder
pencil holders that are made from recycled chip bags.
Points earned from the award can be turned in for products like these.   

Congratulations again to Liz White's class at Shadow Lake Elementary and their impressive work with the Green Globe Awards.

The team received official notification of their award today.  As the Green Globe winner for BOTH the Engaging Your Community and What Makes Your Location Unique Categories the students will be receiving a unique, upcycled TerraCycle Green Globe and 100,000 TerraCycle points.  Additionally, although you were the only submission for How You Hosted an Event, TerraCycle will be rewarding them with the Green Globe and the 50,000 points since the students put so much effort into all their videos.

So the SLES students will be rewarded with THREE Green Globes and 150,000 bonus TerraCycle points! Congratulations!  In a direct quote from TerraCycle "That is quite an impressive accomplishment."

Green Globes are Announced - SLES Wins!

The Green Globe winners were announced last week and SLES has won in two categories!  Five teams from Liz White's elementary class created and submitted videos to The TerraCycle Green Globe Awards in February to answer the questions: 

• Why do you TerraCycle? 
• What makes your site unique? 
• How Do You Engage Your Community? 
• How Do You Store, Ship and Collect for TerraCycle? and 
• How Do You Host a TerraCycle Event? 

Two of their videos were nominated to the Green Globe Finals where the votes of their Shadow Lake and Maple Valley supporters gave them the most votes in two categories and helped them earn two Green Globes Awards! One of the teams was the only one in the country to tackle the last question above, so they will earn a special award or product bundle from TerraCycle.   Lot's of learning for our SLES students with fun and a recognition award to top things off.  

Congratulations to all the Sustainability Learners 

in Mrs. White's class! 

SLES Videos Compete for Prize!

Check out the great videos that our Shadow Lake students made in competition for the TerraCycle Green Globes.   These are 100% the work of our students.  Great job to our Shadow Lake story tellers!   They took the challenge to be a TerraCycle star and highlight a garbage recycling lifestyle to share with others.  There were two categories our students entered.  

Category I:  How do you engage your community to collect for TerraCycle?

Category II:  What makes your TerraCycle collection location unique?

Awards will be announced on March 8th.  Watch here for an update on how our Golden Globe finalists fare.

Shadow Lake Student Explains Waste Free Wednesdays

Do you know what waste free Wednesday is? Well, it’s when you have no garbage in your lunch every Wednesday. To have a lunch with no waste, you need to know what to you can bring. It is much better for the environment if you have a lunch with no products that go in the landfill. Finally, you might get prizes if you take an environmentally friendly lunch.

            

To start, I will tell you what you could bring in your lunch. You could take leftovers in a thermos, such as pasta, soup, rice, etc. Any type of fruit or vegetables could be put in reusable containers. Put your sandwich in a reusable bag or container. Last, desserts need to go in containers as well. Remember, no single- serve packages or plastic bags. Now, you know how to pack a waste free lunch!

           

In addition, you reduce the amount of garbage that goes in the landfill if you pack an environmentally friendly lunch! Only bring products that go in the compost or the recycling as well as reusable products (TerraCycle included.) Every time most students in your school bring no waste in their lunch only a ¼ of a garbage bag is filled instead of ½ to a whole bag being used. On top of that, almost every school in the Tahoma School District participates which helps the environment even more.

            

When you bring a waste free lunch you could earn a prize. If you take a lunch with no garbage, put your raffle ticket in the drawing box. If your name gets pulled at the end of the year, you will get a product made by TerraCycle!

            

All in all, waste-free Wednesday is an excellent way to help the environment. You know what to bring, the garbage size is reduced with your help, and you may get a prize for participating. Now that you know about waste-free Wednesday, do your part to help out the earth.

Thanks so much to Stirling at SLES for this blog post!