Museums, Assemblies, and Collages

Photos courtesy of Liana Inzerillo

Oops, I guess it's been awhile since I updated this thing, eh?

Well, the assembly went over fine. We didn't have a big crowd, but we had fun!

We went to the Climate Change Exhibit at AMNH on Sunday, and that was fun, even though there was a small crowd again. It was very informative, and I totally loved the little buttons you could push to make the ice melt on the globe.

This week we're working on a collage to raise awareness in maybe a more general way than the assembly did. So everyone remember to bring in your old magazines, scissors, glue, tape, etc.

Next week there's no meeting, due to the illustrious Model U.N. Conference in the city.

See everyone tomorrow!

Agenda for the next month or so.

March 24 is the date for the assembly!

So that's less than a month away, which means we all have a ton of work to do!

People who are working on the skit for the script need to have that for next week, and the art contest people need to have the rules set up for next week, as well. And if everyone could bring in $5, the Environmental Club is going to donate a basket for the Chinese Auction at CSI. I also posted a chart paper with a list of important dates in Ms. Francis's room. For those of you who won't see it:

2/28 - E-mail Kasey Bottle Bill letters

3/6 - Meeting. Have rules for art contest, skit script, and $5 for basket. After meeting, shopping trip to purchase items for Chinese Auction basket.

3/13 - Meeting. Have everything completed, including power point, bingo, jeopardy, art contest, skit, guest speaker. Sort who will be selling bags, working check-in table, setting up and cleaning up, etc. Make any last-minute changes to agenda.

3/20 - Run-through of assembly. Expect to stay a little later today.

3/24 - The Big Day! Anybody who doesn't have an H Block should meet me in the auditorium for set-up around 2:45ish.

3/27 - No meeting. Seniors will be on trip.

4/3 - Debrief meeting. What went well, what didn't, and the next project to work on. 

4/4 - Trip to AMNH to see the Climate Change exhibit!

See everybody next week!

Lost Flashdrive, More Bags, Less Letters

First and foremost, I lost my flashdrive. While this may not seem important, it has the jepoardy, powerpoint, bingo, and pretty much everything for Environmental Club on it. Silly me didn't make backups of anything. I last remember seeing it last Friday during club. Has anyone seen it?

Secondly, we did a run-through of the bingo this week. It seemed to work O.K., provided we can keep background noise to a minimum. It only lasted for about ten minutes, however, untily Emily won. So we'll do a regular Bingo, then a four corners and maybe a Round Robin as well.

Ms. Horowitz still hasn't gotten back to me about the date, so I'll bug her in person once school starts up again. Nevertheless, we're probably looking at late March or early April for this. 

Plastic bag drive doing much better this week; keep up the good work everyone!

The bad news is that I only recieved two letters this week for the Bottle Bill - one of which was my own! I'd really like to have a few more before I send them off to Ben, so please e-mail me with yours sometime this week.

See everybody next Friday!

Bottle Bill and Assembly

So last week was a great meeting! We had guest speakers from the CSI NYPIRG explain the importance of passing the Bottle Bill in the state budget, and encourage everybody to write a letter to their state legislator urging them to pass the bill. Sample letters were passed out, and I have some extra if anyone wasn't here last week. We'll be collecting the letters this Friday and mailing them together, so please write a letter, and encourage your family and friends to do so as well!

The basics of the Bottle Bill, from http://www.nypirg.org/enviro/bottlebill/

"1) Make our communities cleaner and increase recycling by updating the bottle bill to include deposits on non-carbonated beverages such as bottled water, iced teas, and sports drinks, which weren’t included in the original law because they barely existed back in 1982. Today, more than 3 billion non-carbonated beverage bottles and cans end up in the trash or polluting our state’s rivers, beaches, and neighborhoods each year because they don’t have a deposit.
2) Generate new funding for local environmental needs by requiring beverage distributors to transfer any unclaimed deposits to the state. Currently, beverage companies are keeping an estimated $140 million a year in unclaimed deposits from bottles and cans that are not returned. The unclaimed deposits from an expanded bottle bill could exceed $218 million a year. New York is out of step with many other states, which require beverage companies to return unclaimed bottle deposits to benefit the public."

Afterwards we went over the powerpoint for the assembly again. It still needs a little work, but that's alright. This week we're going to see if the Bingo will turn out okay, as well as the weekly plastic bag collection!

Last week, McCown brought in substantially more bags than CSI did, and there's only five of them advertising it! Come on, CSI, get on it!

Also, if anyone hasn't bought a canvas bag yet, do it! We're going to be selling these at the assembly, and how terrible would it look if none of us had them ourselves?

Plastic Bag Drive cont.

So, apparently I lied in the last update. The boxes did go up, but then the next day they were gone.

So this week, or yesterday, we decorated some new boxes and put those up. The McCown principal agreed to have the plastic bag drive, as well, so that's going up there. We used the back of the fliers Michelle printed out in November to advertise the sale, since I had them anyway, and because Ms. Horowitz said we needed to advertise the drive.

We got the go-ahead for the assembly, but we're still not sure about the date. So next time I'm thinking we could do a run-through of the powerpoint, the Bingo, and Jeopardy so we can see roughly how long the thing should last. Our next meeting is February 6th, since next week is Regents week.

On February 7th and 8th, everybody should head out to the American Museum of Natural History for the Internation Polar Year's Polar Weekend at the Museum!

I went last year, and it was really cool to see all the polar exhibits and workshops going on, and the whole weekend was really informative. I'll be there again this year at the Students on Ice table, so drop by and say hi!

Speaking of the museum, last week a CSI student gave me a flier about YouthCaN, which is an organization for young people to connect and network about environmental issues. They'll be having a conference at the Museum on April 6. I don't think we're quite ready to have a table at the event, but it looks like it might be tons of fun for us to go and check it out, looking at everybody else's workshops. I'll try to get more information closer to the date.

See everybody in two weeks!

P.S. Whoops! Also, forgot to add that Ms. Horowitz gave me the link to a really cool website where they plant trees in a National Forest in honor of whomever you send the card to. I wish I had this up before the holidays, but if you know anyone who would like a tree for their birthday, go to www.arborday.org/giveatree.

Plastic Bag Drive Up, Projects for next meeting?

The boxes for the plastic bag drive went out today. Please spread the word! We're not putting up paper flyers in the halls, so we have to rely on word of mouth for people to know that there's a plastic bag drive going on!

Also, I really need everybody's projects before the next meeting. My e-mail is wolfgirlami@gmail.com for those who don't have it already.

We're also looking foward to a collaboration with Key Club sometime in the future. Keep an eye out for that!

For a mid-week pick-me-up, here's a cute picture that I thought you guys might enjoy that I saw on Treehugger.

Planning for the Big Assembly

Everybody should check out the Environmental Club in CSI's newspaper, the International Insider! 

It's been a long time since we last met, between snowstorms and break, so let's recap what we were working on last time.

More recycling bins won't help the situation in school unless people know how to use the bins and the system effectively. To solve this problem, the Environmental Club is proposing an information session in the auditorium after school one day soon. Service credit will be offered for any who wish to attend.

Among the activities we hope to have are REUSE Bingo, Earth-Friendly Jeopardy, guest speakers from the NYC Department of Sanitation, and some videos and powerpoints.

I also suggest that club members (or anyone else, for that matter) write letters to the editor of the Insider about the recycling program we have here at school and how to utilize it properly.

I'd also like to just bring to everyone's attention the "One Million Acts of Green." This Canada-based program is a fun way to record your own ways of helping the Earth. Everytime you do an "act of green," you record it on the website and it gets added to the overall total. Check it out at http://green.cbc.ca/