Ncp's S.E.A.O.
EXPLORING SOLUTIONS AND TAKING ACTION TO SHRINK THE ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT
OF OUR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY
PROJECT BY PROJECT
OF OUR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY
PROJECT BY PROJECT
Guess speaker Iza Redlinski is an Urban Ecologist currently working at the Field Museum. She specializes in botany. Iza talked to us about her experiences as a student learning about ecology and what it was like to put her work into practice. She then showed us images of what a prescribed burn in a prairie looks like. She also recommended we downloaded Illinois Wildflowers and INaturalist onto our phones. These apps are both useful tools to help identify different plant and/or animal species within our area. A huge shout out goes to Ms. Qazi for bringing in Iza!
Cool Facts: -Bees that are not in colonies will bury themselves under leaves and other brush during the winter, so don't rake all you leaves! -Iza and Ms. Qazi work with each other at the field museum. -Prescribed burns can help prevent major uncontrollable fires from occurring and replenish the soil with nutrients.
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With invaluable help from Seven Generations Ahead and the CPS sustainability Department, the SEAO is proud to be phasing in commercial composting at Northside. It will begin second semester (2015-2016), with sorting stations in both the lunchroom and the second floor atrium. The most important aspect of the program is effective and enthusiastic sorting by the Northside community. Other composting programs have been established before, although in certain cases when they were rolled out too fast the composting plant had to shut down because of contaminated material.
CPS and Seven Generations Ahead are aiming to roll out composting slowly and effectively, with a combination of good information and enthusiastic practice. Prior to the rollout there will be an information session at the state of the school at the end of finals week. For separating instructions, here are the Sorting Posters. ALSO, even if you don’t drink your milk, PLEASE drain the milk and put the carton in the recycling. Saturday, December 10th, 20 volunteers stopped in Northside's backyard throughout the day to build the frame of the new hoop house! After raising over $2,000 through a GoFundMe and recieveing a $2,000 grant from student council, a hoop house was bought and delivered by truck from Tunnel Vision Hoops (OH) a couple of weeks ago. The hoop house will be used by a colloquium under SEAO to maintain and grow seeds throughout the second semester. The students involved in this colloquium will build raised beds for the hoop house, mix soil, grow seeds, and harvest the plants to donate to food pantries near Northside. The end goal is to be able to use the hoop house to bring fresh produce to students' lunch plates through an Eat What You Grow program. It will also be used as a connection between Northside and food pantries in the community and potentially build relationships with local elementary schools. The hoop house will provide many educational opportunities. Experiential learners will develop a greater understanding of the environment by engaging in first-hand experiences within topics such as ecology, food, water, energy, allocation of resources, conservation, health, sustainability, waste, gardening, and sense of community. In their book Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough & Michael Braungart emphasize that in nature there is no such thing as waste: one organism’s waste is another organism’s food. They argue that our use of materials needs to mimic nature if we are to save the environment. The USEPA challenges us to shift our focus from “waste management” to “materials management on a life-cycle basis.” Our goal has been to help schools lead the way in making this shift and move ever closer to making zero waste. Commercial composting is one important way to make this shift as food scraps and yard trimmings are recovered, composted, and cycled back into the soil. So after Northside was given the opportunity last year to participate in the CPS Composting Pilot Program, and compost our school’s lunchroom food waste, we have dramatically decreased our school’s ecological footprint. At CPS 37% of all the waste generated is food scraps. And food scraps make up most of what is coming out of our lunchrooms and kitchens. This graph is actually already outdated because we now have compostable plates instead of styrofoam plates. So that would mean quite a lot more than 37% of CPS waste is now compostable. Although commercial pickup is costly, the money that Chicago Public Schools uses to send trash to the landfill is used to send it to a composting location. Special compostable trash bags are provided to Hamilton by Seven Generations, an environmental awareness organization that works to make communities greener. Visit this article in the hoofbeat to see how S.E.A.O started the composting program. http://www.ncphoofbeat.org/news/seao-students-look-to-make-a-difference/ |
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