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Schools

Green is This School's Theme

Students at South Salem Elementary School learned about recycling and going green.

For the second consecutive year, South Salem Elementary School's Home School Association (HSA) planned a week-long program to raise the children's awareness about minimizing waste and inventing new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. Through activities, lessons and presentations the students learned how they can take part in the national green movement.

"We are starting to take small steps to change things at the school and educating the kids at the same time so that these things become a way of life," said Stephanie Greenberg, a member of the HSA's Green Week Committee. "There are more people than you realize that feel strongly about the state of the world right now."

Greenberg added that at one point the school didn't even recycle paper. She explained that this prompted the committee to teach students how to take care of the environment by taking part in National Green Week, an educational campaign that spreads environmental awareness in schools.

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The event kicked off with speakers from Salem's Green Committee visiting each classroom with a bag of what first appeared to be garbage. The volunteers went through the contents of the bag with the students and discussed what could be recycled, reused or reduced.

"It's a garbage bag that you can find literally in anybody's house," Greenberg said. "We opened up the garbage and started to take things out. At the end, the kids realize that its not garbage, that they should recycle the items, reuse it or give things away to charity."

At the end of each presentation, students were able to see that a 25-pound bag of garbage could weigh just six pounds if the items were recycled. "The visualization of it is remarkable because you realize how easy it is at school," Greenberg said. "There's no reason why it should be any harder at home. We're trying to teach the kids that you have to check everything."

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Committee members even told students about other unique ways to recycle that the average person wouldn't think about. "Nike will take back old sneakers," Greenberg explained. "It doesn't have to be a Nike sneaker. They pay for the shipping. They will break the shoe down for the sole and that's reused to make tennis courts, playground tops and tracks."

Greenberg also initiated an art project that complemented the concept of recycling.  She assembled boxes of bolts, socks, ribbon, bottle caps, cardboard boxes, magazine pages, egg crates and other assorted recyclable materials for each of the school's classes. Then students in Ms. Marilyn Turtz's art classes created original pieces from the recycled items.

"Students created original masks, cars, houses and other delightful sculptures out of the recycled items during the week-long celebration," Turtz said. "Students were given total creative freedom and came up with imaginative uses for items they would otherwise have thrown away. This was a fun way to raise the children's consciousness about minimizing waste and inventing new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle."

Greenberg also said she felt these projects were a fun way to teach the children about the environment. "Mrs. Turtz said students in her class were saying, 'Wow, she has all of this great stuff at her house,'" Greenberg said. "Meanwhile, they were egg cartons cut up and toilet paper rolls. All this great stuff is garbage!"

There was also a "Lights Out" where all the lights in the building were shut off for 15 minutes at the end of one day to help conserve energy. "Our goal is to try and do this once a week," Greenberg said. "Imagine the energy we can save if the whole school can shut off all of the lights for 15 minutes."

At the end of the week, redeemable bottles and cans were collected. Greenberg said the children were asked to bring five recyclable items to school and that the committee will use that money to buy books to start an environmental section in Salem's library. The bottles and cans were redeemed for $35, which will go towards these new "green" books.

"We're the first people to tell them that there are people out there who would actually reward them for doing the right thing," Greenberg said. "This week was a  great way of doing that."

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