That said, before we take off for the 2009-2010 school year, let’s look at some past resources plus a few new ones…

Green school basics:

• School Sustainability
• School Grounds
• School Transportation
• School Cafeteria
• School Waste Reduction
• Turn Old Sneakers into a Playground
• Green Your Homeschooling & Unschooling Experience
• School & Homeschool Eco-Slanted Field Trip Ideas
• Quick Green School Tip: Green Fundraisers
• LEED for Schools
• One Small Step: Online School Newsletter
• Eco Education Resource

Green education for the smallest tree huggers:

• Earth-friendly child care options
• Green curriculum at UK preschool

Green your college experience:

• Most Sustainable Colleges in the U.S. and Canada
• Ten Ways to Green Your College Experience
• Green Dorm Shopping List
• Eco Dorm Decor & Storage Ideas
• Create A Green College Dorm
• Green College Chats

Green school gear:

• Ten green back-to-school supplies
• Tree Free Notebooks
• Earth-friendly Pens & Pencils
• Recycled & Sustainable Pencil Cases
• PaperBackSwap — Send & Receive Used Books for School or Just Fun
• Stubby Pencil Studio
• Backpacks – Do you really need a new one?

Green your school lunch:

• Green Your Child’s Lunch
• Earth friendly lunch boxes
• Simple Organic Cotton Lunch Bags
• Waste-Free School Lunches
• Metal Lunch Boxes
• Avoid Vinyl Lunch Boxes
• 100% Bamboo Lunch Bag

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

Now, I knew this aunt of an ex boyfriend who once said she went on a field trip in elementary school to a slaughter house (egad). She noted that this was why she never ate meat (a very eco-friendly habit). However, if slaughter house massacres seem too um, violent, here are some other ideas:

Sponsor or join a beach clean-up. Kids get out into the fresh air, the beaches get cleaned up, and everyone learns a thing or two about where trash goes. Any sort of clean up – park, city, walking trail, makes a good field trip.

Head to a forestry center. Not all states or areas have them, but if your area does, kids usually really enjoy a trip to the center. If your area is missing this sort of center, you can always head to the real forest for some bird watching, tree naming, and so fourth. That’s a good trip all on it’s own.

The recycling center. It’s good to see where things end up. Actually what would be cool is a trip to the recycling center, followed, at a later date with one to the local dump. Kids will know what should be at the recycling center, and be able to spot it at the dump – a good lesson.

Spend some time at a local, natural, organic, fair trade, or just overall sustainable business. This one is better for older kids who are getting interested in business. Let the business owner speak about what makes this business more sustainable than others.

Head out and plant trees. This can be a full on lesson. You can work with tree studies (in whatever format you like), and learn about the life-cycle of trees, how they help people, and so on. Then end the whole lesson with a tree planting day. Go somewhere that can actually benefit. Talk to local city organizations to learn who can benefit.

What other earth-friendly field trips can you think of? 

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

No word on if this program is adaptable for green lovin’ homeschoolers, but you can visit the website to gather contact info. In my experience, if something is being aimed at in school kids, there’s usually some sort of projects and or materials that can be acquired by homeschooled kids as well.

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

I read in a book once that if you attend school for 12 years that’s over 5,000 trips to and from your school. If you multiply that number by all the students you go to school with; well, that’s quite a lot of transporting to and from school. This week we’re talking about greening our schools. Today we’re looking at transportation.

Obviously 5,000 transports even multiplied by just 10 results in a lot of pollution created by cars or buses.

Questions to consider for your school include:

How you and all the other students get to school each day – walking, cars, carpools, school bus, city bus, bike?

Does your school have a drop-off and pick-up system that could be improved? Often you see schools where parents line up and sit idling in their cars twice a day.  Does the school have space for an extra parking lot where parents could park? Or could a sign be posted asking parents to turn their cars off as they wait for their kids after school?

Is there a decent carpool program in place? The upside of a neighborhood car-pool to school is not only that you’re living greener, but that you save time. Parents who share a child carpool get four days off and one day of transporting kids – depending on how you divvy up the schedule.

Is there a good school bus program – school buses aren’t that green pollution-wise, but they do create one massive transport system. In the long run, one school bus carrying 40 kids may be better than 40 cars idling for a half hour each day.

Options for change:

Can you walk to school? Or bike? If one parent in the neighborhood volunteers to walk or bike a group of kids to school each day that’s a huge reduction in pollution cause by cars. Plus you get exercise, so it’s a double bonus. In my neck of the woods, I know parents who drive their kids to school, even when school is only five blocks away. Most often the reason cited is weather. It does rain a lot here – but come on. You won’t melt in the rain. If you’re not an Oregonian you can even carry an umbrella (real Oregonians don’t).

Can your school change their schedule? Most schools in one community start and finish at the same time each day. This creates a lot of traffic. Since traffic is stop and go, it’s more polluting than not having traffic obviously. If all the schools in the local area run on different time table, your community may be able to cut down on gas use and traffic stress.

If it’s in the budget, your school could even look into greener school buses:

Michigan greener buses

Hybrid School Bus website

Post from: Tree Hugging Family

In any case, this week we’re discussing greening your school. One of the bigger issues schools have is material waste. Paper waste, supply waste, and related school materials are a huge burden on the environment. You can work with your fellow classmates on this green audit, talk to your teacher, or even go higher up.

Mainly though, a good audit is nothing more than keen observations. To green audit your classroom or entire school waste, here are some things to look at.

Paper waste:

1. How much paper is being used on a daily basis in just your classrooms alone? Count the pieces of paper you use plus the pieces your teacher hands you. Times that by the number of students in your room. Now times it by the number of kids in the entire school – is the number staggering? One report notes that a school in New York, in just one year, used 28 pounds of paper per each student and teacher in the school.
2. Are both sides of paper utilized? This means that homework assignments, worksheets, art paper, and teacher handouts. You can count any paper item. One fun experiment is to ask your entire class to simply make a pile all week of all the paper used in class. Imagine how big that pile will be.
3. Is any of that paper recycled?
4. How is paper recycled at your school. Are there bins available in each classroom? The school office, the library, and in common areas?
5. Are there still paper towels in your bathrooms? A better choice are air dryers, but not all schools have them.
6. What else have you observed that constitutes paper waste at your school?

Guess what – we haven’t even mentioned text books yet. How much more paper do text books create, do you think?
Basic supplies:

1. Make a list of all the school supplies that you are required to have. Here are some examples: backpack, crayons, glue, pens, pencils, notebooks, paints, markers, and containers for storing all of this.
2. Which school supplies are healthy for the environment? School Waste Reduction
3. Which are not?
4. Which supplies can be exchanged for healthier supplies?

For example, some regular old crayons are made with petroleum – that’s a non-renewable resource. There are other options, such as beeswax crayons.

Many glues and paints contain chemicals and icky stuff that’s not healthy for anyone to breathe in on a regular basis.

Once you have your information – for instance, your class uses 200 sheets of paper a day, the point is to use less paper, use up the paper you have, and to recycle. With each question in a green school audit there is also a solution. Obviously that’s a lot of info for one post. First off you should discuss your audit findings with your classmates, teachers, and higher school officials. See what everyone else has to say.

The next part of the plan is education. To learn more about the above issues, including how to make change occur take a look at the following resources:

The Energy Information Administration’s Kid’s Page has a great resource that can teach you all about where paper comes from, how to recycle, why to recycle, and how much energy it takes to make paper.

Your number one read concerning less toxic school supplies should be – Toxic Nation Guide to Less Toxic School Supplies. This is by far the most simple, yet, best resource I’ve seen about safe and sustainable school supplies.
Green Apple School Supply: offers green school supply options over traditional – everything from notebooks to recycled rulers.

Are Art Supplies Toxic?: A great article for parents that explains how to read art supply labels. Now you can know which supplies are safe and which are toxic.

Post from: Tree Hugging Family