mathjosi's blog

We will have our next committee meeting on:

Friday, December 7th at 5pm
Red Horse Cafe
12th Street and 6th Avenue in Park Slope

Agenda:

1. Introductions & Interests
2. Recycling in Your School: How to we start and run an awesome recycling program!
3. Educating Tomorrow: The blog/website in order to stay connected and how we can pool ideas on environmental education in our schools.
4. Pushing for change: Who should we contact politically to move for real change in the system? Bill DeBasio, Public Advocate, should we contact a lawyer?
5. Media: Creating a media kit and getting the word out now
6. Planning Ahead: What we're going to work on and setting next meeting date

We decided to use the Red Horse Cafe, they have a really nice square couch area, but we can't reserve it, so Coquille and I will try to get there early to HOG the couch area...anyone else who could get there early to help us with the HOGGING is welcome, but we will try to start on-time with introductions. Hope to see you there.

Micki Josi
mathjosi@yahoo.com
NYC School Recycling Action Committee
My blog: http://www.educatingtomorrow.org/node/224

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead

Currently at my school we are working on a unit to teach students about garbage and recycling. Here are few of my brainstorm ideas on how we might go about it... I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback:
I have a few ideas for math lessons.

1. I'm sure we can do a lot with the Gone Tomorrow video with statistics: (I'll have to watch the video a 3rd time to make sure I got these right)
a. Only 5% of all plastic is recycled
b. Plastic is produced at 7 times the rate that it is recycled
c. Corporation produce 70 times the amount of waste as individuals
We could follow this grim video up with a few light hearted videos: Simpsons: Trash of the Titans and The Lorax. I have the Lorax and would be happy to buy Gone Tomorrow (I sent you the link before for the video on-line) and Simpson Season 9 DVDs.

2. Recyclables Mobile
Students should do a recycles scavenger hunt in order to solve and display visually their answer to:
1. How many cups are in one gallon? or How many ounces are in one gallon? They could collect 1 gallon, connect that to 4 containers that are size one quart, on each quart hang two pint size objects, on each pint two cups size objects. They could collect these items form their recycling at home and start to display them. We could simultaneously be teaching kids about recycling at home and give them decals etc to set up their own home recycling system. This might inspire students to want to create a school recycling program... we can talk more about this.

3. Calculate waste

I sent the following letter to the mayor on the city's website. The response below the letter was from Mary Most from NYC Dept. of Sanitation's Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse & Recycling. You should contact her if you are interested in starting a school recycling program. She can provide you with information and some supplies, including decals, poster, curriculum, videos, and more. She is also the person you will work with on your Golden Apple Awards entry if you start a program. She recommends that instead of writing to the Mayor, since she will in term receive the letter and have to respond to it, that we send all letters to Chancellor Klein, since the problem is within the DOE and he's responsible for enforcing his own regulations with regard to recycling (check out Coquille's blog for a copy on the Chancellor's regulations on recycling in the DOE).

-----------------------------My Letter to the Mayor-----------------------------

As a New York City teacher fellow who started and ran a recycling program in a Bedford-Styvesant middle school for two years. I face the issues discussed by the recent Post article: “IL'LITTER'ATE SCHOOLS FLUNK THEIR RECYCLING” on a daily basis.
I have a few questions for you:
1. Why doesn’t the city promote recycling?
2. Is the city’s garbage situation at a crisis level yet? When will it be?
3. How much garbage does the city generate?
4. Where does all of our the garbage go?
5. How much of this waste is reusable and/or recyclable?
6. What will happen if we keep throwing all of these recyclable items away?
7. Can the city or school generate some kind of income from recycling?
8. Is recycling cost effective?
9. When will we be so overwhelmed with garbage we won’t have anywhere else to put it? What will happen then?
10. Why don’t people realize that this is an inevitable crisis that must and can be averted through a wide-spread reduce, reuse, and recycling effort?

Who and what is the School Recycling Action Committee?

Coquille and I (Micki AKA mathjosi) are both crazy Oregon hippie chicks who came to NYC to find experience in the big city. Coming for a very green town of Eugene, Oregon, we were stunned and amazed by the amount of waste and lack of environmental awareness that we'd become accustomed to. Both NYC Teaching Fellows (me - teaching middle school math, she teaching bilingual elementary), we were horrified by the dismal sight of dirty old blue recycling bins in every classroom being used only for garbage, no thought or mention of recycling, littered cafeterias, hallways, and classrooms.... not to mention neighborhoods and students who found it common place to throw trash on the sidewalks, streets, on the floor, in the desks, and even out the window. We inspired each other to take on the volunteer role of recycling coordinator in addition to our demanding teacher duties in tough Brooklyn schools. I started and ran my program for two years in a shared building with two other schools, while she simultaneously did the same at her elementary school, which occupied her entire building. We shared ideas about how to work with our custodians, acquire the necessary bins, train our students with assemblies, held promotional contests, and contacted Sanitation constantly about the problems we were experiencing with their collection which is infrequent at best or sometimes doesn't happen for weeks on end while bags of recycables become litter all over the side walk and streets.

Finally we documented the whole process to present to New York City's Department of

Last night a few of us braved the cold, rain, noise and crowds to meet up at the Village Pour House for our School Recycling Action Committee Meeting.

We had a huge table in the back, but it was super noisy and almost impossible to hear people. Seven people were in attendance: Coquille, Chong, Dave, Micki, Sarah, John, and Marie. We tried our best to discuss the issues at our schools and the individual interests. Coquille shared NYC RRR curriculum kit from the Department of Sanitation (order one for yourself), her Golden Apple Award binder, and copies of the Post article and the NYC DOE regulations on recycling, which states that all schools are required by law to recycle and must set up a recycling program by assigning recycling coordinators at every level: All DOE offices and schools. We know these regulations are not be followed or enforced! You can see the copies at Educating Tomorrow look under groups and then NYC School Recycling blog. We we will be this Group to post ideas about actions we can all be taking in our schools and on our computers to push our schools and the HUGE DOE to do it's job and start recycling programs.

Chong shared his work with Soul Survivors Inc. on composting programs in the city and the possibility of working with schools to institute compost training and worm bins. He is also working on the creative end on comic strips and educational materials for kids on composting. Micki expressed her interest in working with him specifically on training kids at her school since she is starting a unit of study on waste, garbage and recycling. Compost would be an excellent addition to unit and could be a very cool way to learn math and science!

Here's another great article on NYC Recycling by City Limits.

http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3294

Do you often find yourself uttering this very question?

Well here's how I did it:

Step 1. Request necessary publications, decals, poster, videos, coloring books, magnets, etc from the NYC Department of Sanitation. http://www.nyc.gov/recycle

Step 2: Replace old dirty blue recycling bins that are coated with trash from their many years serving as garbage bins in teh school with real garbage bins and sparkling new blue recycling bins for paper only in every classroom. This cost $1,500 for a school with 4 floors and approximately 500 students grades 6 - 8. I wrote and we receive a grant from http://www.donorschoose.org. The grant also paid for large CLEAR (not blue) collection bags, a wheeled collection bin for each floor, bottle collection bins for the cafeterias and main office, and sanitary gloves for the kids to collect with.

A wonderful video of only 20 minutes... based on a book. Watch the video on-line.

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/11/22/gone-tomorrow-the-hidden-life-of-garbage-video/

Does anyone know of any other movies or lessons for kids on the issue of garbage and recycling?

Here's an idea... what if everyone (parents, teacher, students, and the public at large) wrote their own passion letter to Chancellor Klein to persuade him to pay attention to recycling in schools and take action. Why not submit your 350 words or less letter to Klein now?

Here's the letter I wrote:

I am a math teacher in my 6th year working for the DOE in NYC. I became aware of the recycling problem when I saw old dirty recycling bins used as garbage cans throughout the building and every DOE school building I've been in since that first day. So frustrated and bothered by this situation, in 2004, I started a school-wide recycling program at my school, I.S. 33, with a grant for $1,500 from Donors Choose to buy new bins, and garbage bins for each classroom, bottle containers for cafeteria, main office, and teachers lounge, collection bags, gloves, and wheeled containers. I acquired training materials from the Sanitation Department and conducted assemblies to the student body. I recruited student volunteers to collect the recyclables. We experienced many problems including, custodians throwing away recyclables, cafeteria staff not recycling properly, and the Department of Sanitation not coming to pick up the curbside recycling for weeks on end.

Here is the letter I submitted to the NY Post after their article on recycling, or lack thereof, in NYC schools:

Thanks to the Post for your article on the lack of recycling in schools. As a teacher in the NYC DOE, I face this problem everyday. I started and ran a recycling program in Brooklyn for 2 years. It was no easy task.

The first issue is acquiring supplies: real garbage bins (not dirty recycling bins), and new and clean recycling bins, large clear bags, plastic gloves, and wheeled collection bin for each floor. We received a grant for $1,500 from Donors Choose for these. Decals, posters, curriculum, and videos came from the Department of Sanitation, who also awarded our program $1,500 for their Golden Apple Awards.

The next is collection. Students participate eagerly, but without a supportive infrastructure, the collection is either thrown out by custodians or not collected by Sanitation (we experienced both). Realistically, each school building needs a trained professional whose sole responsibility is to see that recycling codes are followed.

We are, after all, in the business of educating the future. We are mis-educating them, if the teaching of recycling isn’t on the bill. I want to rally support for a massive recycling initiative in this city. Please contact me by enlisting with Recycle THIS!.