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?