So Now What?

As for me and my family, we will be stepping up our recycling efforts. We've learned about our personal habits and determined that we need to work as team to give recycling our best effort.

I set this blog up as an example for a student exploration of the topic of environmental stewardship and how it relates to them personally. The recycling experience I shared was one of personal nature that hopefully got readers thinking about their own lives. My hope is that elementary and middle school students could explore a subtopic regarding the environment by using a blog to share their personal experiences and communicate with one another regarding the subtopic.

There are so many wonderful ways to incorporate blogs into school curriculum and students are certainly adept at keeping up with technology. I would love to hear about ways that educators are incorporating blogging into the curricula. I also welcome any comments or ideas regarding methods to encourage blogging as a children's or young adult librarian.

wordle from Google Images

Reducing Waste

Although Walmart is not my favorite store, the company has made several efforts to become greener. In my research I found this video.I thought that the story that the Walmart director of innovations shared about recycling stryofoam was interesting. He stated that the company incorporates recycling into their day to day business and makes it part of what they do which makes it a natural process. The same is true in our home. When we are in the habit of recycling and stick to the schedule we do a better job. The styrofoam story also got me thinking....

Since my most significant discovery in our recycling project was the amount of packaging that is thown out, I thought I'd ask for suggestions regarding ways that conusmers can voice opinions regarding packaging. I feel that companies could do better jobs of reducing packinging and waste. What do you think? 

It Ain't Easy Being Green

The results are in and we collected 7 small bags of trash and I must add that the bags were small 10 gallon size. My husband and I each had three bags while my sons’ trash only totaled one together. We were doing some painting work today which contributed trashed paint cans taking us to a higher total. The boys were under their predicted totals while my husband and I were over our predicted totals. I guess the activity also indicates the grown-ups our house make more trash or pick more of it up…J

It was interesting to see that over half of the trashed items were items that we could recycle. That convinced me that our efforts in recycling at home are worth the extra effort. It was also interesting to see that several of the trashed items were packaging. It was eye-opening for me to see that packaging accounted for so much refuse.  Tomorrow I’ll tackle the topic of packaging.

Reusing Saves the $s and the Environment

Environmental stewardship definitely encompasses more than the buzzword recycling.

Reusing items saves us money, reduces waste, and is a way to do something positive for the environment.

One thing that I love about my best friend is that she passes on her son's clothing to my youngest son. Since he's only 8 and the clothes she passes on are in things he likes to wear, I'm still able to get him to wear the clothes that are in great shape. We use the clothes that have seen lots of wear for play and work clothes.  In my home recycling station I have boxes and bags of these clothes to pass on to my sister and another friend.

My mom also does her part for the environment when she passes on loads magazines to me. She gets them from her sister, her gets them from her sister-in-law, who gets them from subscriptions, I guess. I haven't bought a magazine or subscription in over 5 years and have at least 100 in waiting for me to read before I pass them on to appreciative neighbors and friends.

How do use reuse items? Do you have tips you are willing to share? 

If you'd like more information regarding reusing go to Squidoo to learn about everyday household items that can be reused. Some of the suggestions are a bit more than I am willing to do, but there were some very useful tips too.

Recycling Efforts Should Be Easy.....Right?

Okay, I’m off to a good start this morning. I actually remembered to collect my personal trash which is pretty amazing. The man and young men in my family actually agreed to collect their personal trash on Saturday. We all made our predictions though Nathan's is a bit hard to hear because he thought his identity should remain anonymous.

Mark and Brandon's predictions:

Nathan's prediction:

My prediction:

Recycling efforts should be easy

I'm really interested in recycling efforts and services offered in communities. If recycling efforts aren't relatively easy, I fear the general public won't buy into it. When we moved to Johnson County in 2008 I had a a difficult time trying to figure out what to do with my recycling. Some people in our neighborhood had curbside recycling and my investigations revealed we were on the wrong side of street to have the some convenience. I called Johnson County Waste Management to learn that a drop off site was about the mile up the road from our home. What is great about the site is that the glass, metal, and plastic doesn't have to be sorted. I will admit that I sometimes pack the items in the car and then forget to drop off which is frustrating, but for the most part the drop site works well for us.

My kids were adamant that we have a recycling station in our new house. So we did set up an area in our laundry room to serve as our station. We have a place for paper as well as place for our plastics, glass, and metal. It seems the difficult task in our house is getting the items from the kitchen to the station. Members of the household, who shall remain nameless, throw recyclables in the trash instead of taking them the extra 10 steps to the recycling station we set up.  UGH

So I am interested in how recycling does or doesn't work in other homes.  Do most people set up recycling stations? If so, are items sorted in the home? Who's responsible for the recycling efforts in homes? Is it a team effort? Or is one person the "go to" person?

Who Can Waste the Least?

After racking my brain for a topic for my blog exploration, I stumbled upon one this morning while I was researching lesson plans. I found a website titled Brain Pop and signed up for a free trial membership.  I like the structure of the website and the interactive tools they provided for learners within the lesson plans they offer. In order to view the videos and play the games you must have a membership or a trial membership. I was hoping I could embed the video, but I wasn't able to.

http://www.brainpopjr.com/

My little environmental stewardship project has ties to the lesson titled “Who Can Waste the Least?” which was written by Rachel Zindler. You can check out the lesson if you'd like:

http://www.brainpop.com/educators/lp-whocanwastetheleast/

 The challenge lies in reducing personal waste by recycling, reducing, and reusing. The lesson plan requires students to carry the personal trash that they create for one day with them in a garbage bag. I’m going to talk to my family about the project at dinner tonight and ask each of them to participate in the challenge along with me. I plan to collect my trash tomorrow while I have a feeling that by husband and sons will choose to collect on Saturday or Sunday. I think it will be really interesting to actually see the trash that one person collects. For the sake of the authenticity, I am going to collect items that I normally recycle. As a family, I think we gotten a bit lazy in our recycling efforts (especially since we have to load them up and drop them off) and I’m hoping this activity prompts us to do a little bit better as we learn more about waste managment along the way.

I'm curious about the recycling habits of others. Do you have curbside recycling in your community? If not, where do you take recyclables?

I'm also interested in any predictions you may have regarding the trash I'll be lugging around tomorrow. Until then..............

Getting Started

Well, here I am beginning a blog for my high tech learning class. I'm still not quite sure of my educational blog topic--but I do have some ideas.  I hope to get started with my first post tomorrow, but I thought I better be sure that I've got the blog up and running first. So...here goes.