National Green Week 2009
Green Mountain Coffee Award Winner
Rivendell Academy Middle School
Orford, NH
National Green Week was a successful event that the high school and middle school environmental club students (with support from the Town of Orford Conservation Commission) participated in. It was run to see how we could actually help the environment. Activities included:
- Monday - Lights out all week in most classrooms.
- Tuesday - Collect boxes of used batteries and ink cartridges all week.
- Wednesday - Reuse a bottle for the entire week.
- Thursday - Ride a bike, carpool, walk or ride the bus day.
- Friday - Full school clean up by advisories with environmentally safe cleaners (researched and produced by RAMSEC).
Continued Year Long:
- Based on the data from tests in class and our interviews, we have found that we can clean by using old-fashioned elbow grease and more environmentally safe products. We will market our new More Elbow Grease product. Tote bags with our RAMSEC logo are stocked with our recipe of “Green” cleaning products, recycled newsprint and containers.
- Composting with worms. Because of a newspaper article, we have also been invited to present our environmental initiatives at the Marion Cross School in Norwich on May 8th.
- Continue washing trays on a daily basis after lunch. Our trash weight has dropped from 75lbs to 29lbs a day (grades 6-12) since we began this project. Every other Friday we pick up paper from each room at the academy for recycling.
- We have an exciting Environmental Club bulletin board in the middle school hallway. We also have a tab on Mrs. Reichert’s Blog. See http://sites.epals.com/ratreichert
- Our grounds clean up crew picks up trash outside weekly.
- New t-shirts are here! The logo features new Earth hatching from an egg that reminds us to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, but most of all RE-EVOLVE into more caring and conscientious people.
- Our daily snow and temperature readings have been submitted to the State of New Hampshire Winter Severity Index. This helps our deer population.
- RAMSEC held its third meeting with members from Orford Conservation Commission. We ironed out our ideas and projects for Green Week. Our next projects include:
- Researching the possibility of having the ROCC become a certified Tree Farm.
- Study the energy audit completed this fall and look for possible improvements.
Rivendell’s Outdoor Community Classroom (ROCC) is the segment of the Cross Rivendell Trail behind our school. Under the leadership Scott, Cassie, and Logan, we will have ROCC open again by May 1st. This is a mile long educational tool to learn about flora, fauna, geology, and local environmental problems.
- Our 7th Grade was chosen to visit the Montshire Museum on May 8th. They will study what school children find interesting on their trails and use that info to develop better interpretive materials. Students will use digital cameras to document their findings. Later they will look at the photos and discuss them. The second part of this project is for students to develop a podcast audio trail guide for other schools.
