Green Team

Green Team Zero Waste Gift Ideas 2023

Douglas Park Green TeamEach day, at every school in our city, many students bring their lunch to school. Often, these lunches consist of recyclable single use plastics (i.e. yogurt cups, apple sauce containers, etc.). Unfortunately, students are throwing these recyclable plastics into the garbage, where they do not belong. The Douglas Park School Green Team wants this practice to stop. These 20 students give up their afternoon recess everyday to collect all the recyclable plastics and paper and ensure they are put in the main recycling bin, rather than in the garbage. They educate all students and staff on recycling practices and litterless lunches. They also plan to educate the other schools in the city of their initiatives so recyclable single use plastics are no longer thrown away.

The Green Team's Story

Every week, members of the Douglas Park School Green Team selflessly give up their recess to collect paper and recyclable materials from each classroom and transfer them to the main recycling bin. This diverts approximately 3,850 pounds, per school year, of recyclable materials from the landfill.

In 2022, they started an exciting new Environmental initiative. They collaborated with the Minister of Environment, Dana Skoropad, to discuss how to minimize waste generated by Halloween candy wrappers. After some research, The Green Team discovered Terracycle boxes and purchased one for their school with the money they earned by recycling bottles and cans at Sarcan. This box enabled students to recycle snack bags and candy and cookie wrappers, saving an estimated 2,500 wrappers from the landfill.

Another initiative was to minimize waste over the holiday season. They created a YouTube video on Waste-Free Gifts with the goal to minimize waste and maximum cheer.

In October 2023, they invited community members to come to the front doors of the school and drop off hard-to-recycle items to recycle with the Terracycle Free Recycling Program (i.e. Angie’s BOOMCHICKAPOP ready to eat popcorn bags, oral care products, Babybel packaging, deodorant containers, pens and pen caps, mechanical pencils, markers, etc., and empty cosmetic packaging. When students, staff, and members of the community drop off their Halloween wrappers and hard-to-recycle items, they will be entered into a draw to win a gift card. The goal is to have the public reduce their garbage by enticing them to participate in the free recycling initiative.

The Douglas Park School Green Team hope to inspire other schools to start their own Green Team and to encourage the community to refuse, repurpose, reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Students want you to recycle refuse from that Halloween candy stash

Green Team Announcement

Hi again! Want a chance to win ANOTHER gift card and reduce your garbage?!

Once a month over the lunch hour, we would like to invite the Boothill community to come to the front doors of Douglas Park school and drop off items to recycle with the Terracycle free recycling program. We will collect these hard-to-recycle items and ship them to Terracycle for recycling or take them to recycling drop off points in the city. See below for a list of items to bring.

This program is absolutely free and every time you drop off items, you will be entered into a draw to win a gift card! So start saving the items listed below and bring them to Douglas Park School on October 25, November 29, and December 13th over the lunch hour, between 11:45am and 12:45pm. Please share with neighbours who aren’t on Facebook.

Before you recycle, please remove as much of the remaining product as you can.

-Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP® ready-to-eat popcorn bags, microwave popcorn bags, and outer plastic packaging and other Conagra popcorn brands packaging including Orville Redenbacher®, ACT II®, Jiffy Pop®, Crunch 'n Munch®, and Poppycock®.

-All Babybel® packaging (for all the different varieties and formats), such as cellophane, tag, net, metal clasps, wax, and plastic wrappers

-ALL BRANDS of Oral care products and packaging - toothpaste tubes, floss containers, and all other non-recyclable products and packaging.

-ALL BRANDS of deodorant containers and caps

-ALL BRANDS of pens and pen caps, mechanical pencils, markers and marker caps, highlighters and highlighter caps, permanent markers and permanent marker caps

-ALL BRANDS of empty cosmetics packaging, such as:

* Plastic and glass tubes, pots, pumps, sprays, and jars

* Lipstick, lip balm, and lip gloss tubes, cases, and caps

* Mascara tubes

* Eyeliner pencils and cases

* Eyeshadow and bronzer cases

* Foundation packaging

* Powder cases

* Eyeshadow and concealer tubes and sticks

$1000 Student Citizenship Award.

Public Schools of Saskatchewan awarded The Douglas Park Green Team with a $1000 Student Citizenship Award. The team was recognized for their environmental impact. Here is the video the team made for their application.

youtu.be/RbQYKofCyRE

2022 Saskatchewan Waste Minimization Award for Outstanding Achievement (School Category)

The Douglas Park School Green Team has won another award! They were awarded the 2022 Saskatchewan Waste Minimization Award for Outstanding Achievement (School Category). Here is a youtube video highlighting their award.

https://youtu.be/YKN0MPBzLu4

Green Team Interviews

The Douglas Park Green Team is once again making the school proud by introducing more ways for students, and their families, to green their Halloween clean up.

The team has set up a collection bin in the school to recycle student’s Halloween candy wrappers. Students are invited to bring their Halloween candy wrappers to recycle. The bin will be available from November 1- until the bin is full.

You can listen to the CBC Morning Edition interview here.

You can learn more about the Green Team from these past interviews (links below) and subscribe to the Green Team’s Youtube Channel.

Zero Waste Gift Ideas

2022

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