Article!

Note: this was written by the Morning News, not by the Haas Hall Academy SWAT.
Students Develop Recycling Program! by Rose Ann Pierce
"Fayetteville - Christie Grigg, a junior at Haas Hall Academy, tries to practice what she preaches by bringing her lunch to school in packaging she can use over and over.
 She is one of eight students who organized voluntarily to develop a recycling program as part of the school's entry in a national contest, the Lexus Eco-Challenge.
The program encourages students to participate in "green lunches" by bringing their lunches in reusable plastic containers rather than plastic bags easily thrown away.
 "I am trying to quite bringing in trash," Grigg, 17, said.
 "If you can do it for a week, it can become routine," said junior Caleb Jenkins, 16.
 Besides trying to increase awareness about recycling and green lunches, the students are evaluating what gets thrown away every day, a so-called waste audit.
 In the first five weeks, they have found 88 pounds of trash that could have been recycled, most from students and teachers throwing stuff away from lunch, Jenkins said.
 Haas Hall doesn't have a cafeteria and students and teachers bring their lunches most days.
 The  students also said they have found unopened bottles of water and uneaten apples and other food in the garbage.
 "Only 32 percent of recyclable [products] get recycled," said Lisa Terry, a 14-year-old ninth-grader.
 Junior Danna Gardner, 16, said she's not convinced people are listening. Gardner believes students don't like to recycle.
 "They aren't buying into it," she said.
 The students will compile the results of their "green" lunches into an entry for the Lexus Eco-Challenge Contest, sponsored by Scholastic Corp. Scholastic is a publisher and distributor of children's books, educational technology  and children's media.
 The students will develop and action plan and present that plan Jan. 19th. The contest is divided into two parts: land and water and air and climate.
 The Haas Hall students will enter the air and climate contest.
 A $10,000 prize goes to the winning team. That team moves on to another challenge, to be announced. The winning team of the final challenge wins $30,000.
 The contest is intended to appeal to students to make an environmental difference in the environmental health of Earth.
 The awareness campaign resumes after the winter holiday break.
 The student team said the exercise has raised their awareness.
 "I'm becoming more conscious of what I'm throwing away," said sophomore Kimberly Tomlinson, 15."
What do you guys think of the article?
www.hhaswat.comxa.com

Wasteful Americans!

While performing daily waste audits (for more information on waste audits see the FAQ section of
www.hhaswat.comxa.com), we were all shocked that people threw away untouched materials- whole apples, unopened water bottles, and we even found whole lunches. And to make this clear, our school doesn’t provide lunch, everyone packs their own. So why pack something only to throw it away hours later?
This is one reason we held Waste Free Lunch Week. We know that people own lunch boxes (rather than plastic bags or brown paper bags), reusable water bottles (rather than the plastic ones), and reusable containers (like Tupperware) for everything else.
Challenge yourself to do better. Every little bit helps, so help make a difference. We’re counting on you.

Why Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling is Important

Although our project has focused on trying to get our school to recycle, we have also encouraged reducing and reusing during Waste Free Lunch Week. Reducing the amount of waste generated is just as important to reducing a carbon footprint as the other two. When you choose not to buy an item, or buy reusable items, you have reduced the amount of waste going to the landfill! Reusing items create less waste because you skip the buying process altogether! Recycling is important, because you are using fewer resources, choosing a more energy efficient process, and you are keeping items out of the landfill.


When Sophia Stephenson visited, she discussed what the landfill is and what goes on there. The landfill is a large space, often a series of holes, where our waste is dumped, driven over with a backhoe multiple times, and left until the hole is full and covered. There is not much, if any, room for air, so even food won’t decompose. An archeologist found a hot dog with a newspaper from the 1970s. Neither had decomposed. And that lovely smell? Organic materials (food and paper), so compost and recycle, if not for the environmental effects, the smell. Don’t believe it? Read these:


http://health.state.ga.us/pdfs/hazards/LandfillGas.bro.pdf


http://people.hws.edu/Halfman/Data/PublicInterestArticles/Landfills.pdf


And if you are local, this website gives you all the information about what Washington County offers:


http://www.co.washington.ar.us/EnvironmentalAffairs/


Please remember to buy recycled too! When consumers don’t create a demand for these products, manufacturers stop making them, and recycling does no good.

Your Carbon Footprint

Your carbon footprint is the impact you are having on the earth, meaning resources you are using everyday, and the amount of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) you emit. Here are easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint:

• Carpool, use public transportation, walk, or ride your bike rather than drive by yourself
• Purchase reusable items like shopping bags, water bottles, and rechargeable batteries
• Bring waste free meals with you to school or work
• Reduce, reuse, recycle!
• Close the loop and buy recycled products
• Eat less meat- the meat industry accounts for 18% of GHG emissions
• Buy local and organic
• Use energy efficient appliances and LED or CFL light bulbs
• Use clotheslines rather than the dryer
• Taking shorter showers
• Turning the water off when not in use, same goes for lights, and other appliances

There are many more ways, but some are so simple you don’t even realize that you’re making a difference. Many of these techniques save money too!

All Systems Are Go!

The Haas Hall Student Waste Auditing Team (SWAT) now has a website up and running, as well as a blog! We have all been working hard to get everything to come together and to get the first audits done. Now most of the organization has been done, and we hope *knock on wood* that there will be few, if any, more obstacles anytime soon. We look forward to not only educating the school about recycling and its effects on the environment, economy, and everyday life, but the rest of the nation as well! We are launching a campaign in an attempt to get other schools and communities around the country to join in on this with us and do their best to be environmentally-minded. More information on this shall arrive soon! Thank you all for reading this and for your help in this, everything you do is greatly appreciated!