Thank You!

Thank you counselors, campers and parents for a great Girl Scouts Kids Go Green camp. I hope the kids had a good experience and that they enjoyed learning about going green and the green crafts. I will be posting some of the how tos from the crafts and some other ideas to take what you might have laying aroung the house and use it to make something else. Please consider getting involved in the Green Team at your school-and think twice before you throw stuff away.

Green In Action

All week we have been talking about going green, making green crafts and learning facts and statistics about conservation. Today we had the opportunity to have a visitor from the Council Rock School District and learn about what the district is doing to conserve. Mr. Taylor taught us all about different things the district is doing-and many you can do at home. Meadows, water heaters, light bulbs, voluntary energy black outs, temperature levels according to the weather and so much more. Mr. Taylor also taught us how he will be able to monitor energy across the district and taught us about an award the district has won for conservation. Thank you Mr. Taylor for sharing with us today!

Terracycle & You

During the week the kids have asked some interesting questions: who was the first person to recycle, how do animals recycle and what are people doing to recycle. Today at Kids Go Green camp the kids learned about Terracycling. A student at Princeton University started Terracycle in 2002 with an organic product-worm poop-in recycled soda bottles. The idea of reusing products and repurposing items has grown into a successful industry. What terracycle does is recycle items that would normally be put in the trash. Some terracycle materials are made into other products and some are modified and reused. Millions of products are shipped to their facilities around the world for sorting and processing. The terracycle headquarters is in Trenton New Jersey. At terracycle they have all repurposed materials in their offices and experiment with giving what would have been trash a new life. Here is the link to their site:
http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/

Paper

Today the campers learned that the most common form of waste in America is paper and that the average family gets about one and a half trees worth of junk mail every year. There were so many facts about paper shared today-and we worked on recycling some catalog and magazine sheets into pencil holders. Campers will also learn how to make beads with the paper tomorrow. Take a look around your house and see if you can recycle it-or repurpose items and give them a new life.

Monday Go Green Quiz

Did you hear about the "quiz" that the kids took today at camp? Well-you can take it too... Go to this link and answer the ten questions and I will share the answers tomorrow with the next quiz. Good luck! Monday Go Green Quiz

The Green Team

I was told there is no I in team-and today would never have been so organized and fun without the support of my friends and fellow counselors. We had 15 campers today in grades 3, 4 and 5. Today's activities included sorting trash (what would you recycle and what would you put in the trash), a ten question quiz about going green, a presentation about uses for jeans, personalizing the home sewn jean bags and customizing bracelets made out of soda pull tabs. We will be posting the link to the quiz later tonight If you would like to try to answer the questions as well. Thank you all for trusting your kids with us-and for your interest in going green!

Re-Vision

Stop-before you throw that item away-think...Could it be recycled? Could someone else use it? Would a local charity be interested in the item? Could I make it in to something else? It might take a little extra effort-but you might be able to re-vision an article to give it a second life. For Kids Go Green camp we collected items that people might not need any longer. We advertised to family and friends and needed a certain number of each item. Some of the thinge we re-visioned include: 30 pairs of jeans, 285 soda pull tabs, 120 juice pouches, 15 mens ties, 15 discarded books, scrap material, buttons, a huge pile of catalogs and magazines and so much more. It got a little messy and my house was a little cluttered at times. Most items needed to be modified or cleaned before they could be used. It took so much longer than I ever estimated to get the supplies ready for camp-but it was so worth it. I had searched the Internet in Google images, Family Fun Magazine, on Etsy and also on Pinterest for ideas-but the reality was trying to make each craft and modifying them for the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders that will be at camp. Below is a new life for some discarded library books. My mother is a former librarian-and even she is happy with these new hiding places for treasures. Some of these books contain outdated information, some are damaged and some have never been touched. We used the paper "middles" for another craft later in the week. So look before you toss-especially when you are out. If you have something that can be recycled-but there is only trash when you are out-take it home with you and put it in the correct spot to get a new life.