December 2009: Earl Beatty Introduces Litter Free Lunches

One of Earl Beatty’s goals this year is to become a Platinum certified EcoSchool. Becoming a Platinum certified school entails focusing student and staff efforts on minimizing Earl Beatty’s waste and energy consumption. With the goal of minimizing waste in mind, The ECO/Green Team came up with the idea of encouraging staff and students to bring litter free lunches and snacks to school. A litter free lunch is one in which nothing needs to be thrown away. Here are some tips for packing a litter free lunch:

What’s Hot!

Retro lunch kits/thermal lunch bags

Reusable plastic containers

Reusable drink bottles

Personal beverage mugs

Snacks in minimal wrapping

Recycling

What’s Not

Brown paper bags

Plastic sandwich bags

Disposable single servings

Polystyrene cups

Overpackaged, overpriced snacks

Making garbage

Did you know?

It takes a very long time for disposable products to decompose in our landfill sites. For example:

Disposable Materials: Years it takes to decompose

A paper napkin: 1 year

A milk carton or juice box: 5 years

A newspaper: 5 – 7 years

A grocery bag: 10 – 20 years

A tin can: 50 years

An aluminum can: 500 years

A water bottle: 700 years

A Styrofoam plate: 1 million years or longer

A glass bottle: 1 million years or longer

Please help Earl Beatty do all we can to help our environment and its natural resources. Make a commitment to reduce waste, reuse and recycle. Start today by packing a litter free lunch!

October 2009: Budding Botanists: More Planting at Earl Beatty

Through the Joan Grys Award* and a successful city of Toronto greening application**, Earl Beatty was the happy recipient of 1000 (that’s right! One thousand!) free bulbs to plant in the schoolyard. Once again, Earl Beatty students found themselves getting their hands dirty in the name of environmental stewardship. Good work everyone!

* The Joan Grys Award was received by Earl Beatty for work that was done by the school and several Parent Council Greening Team Eco Committee members. This work involved the planning and building of a butterfly garden from previous years located in the south-west area of the schoolyard and the newly designed outdoor classroom.

** The application was submitted by Parent Council Greening Team Eco Committee members to the City of Toronto Clean and Beautiful Fund.