My school, my family and my community helping
the Earth by Olivia
My school, Ladner Elementary, my family and my community do
things that effect the environment in a positive way. We do our best to
save electricity, recycle and throw garbage away. Right now my school
is also in the process of building a garden. First of all, saving electricity
is very important because when you make electricity you are using coal
and oil which pollutes the environment. At Ladner elementary we have
a group of kids of different ages that are called the S.W.A.T team,
S.W.A.T stands for, saving watts at every turn. The S.W.A.T team
comes up with excellent ideas of how they and the school can save
electricity. For example the S.W.A.T team encourages classes to
participate in lights out lunches on Fridays were we eat with the lights
out and let the sun light in. Another example of one of the events the
S.W.A.T team organized was national sweater day, the kids and teachers
all had their sweaters on instead of turning up the heat. Second, my
family is good with keeping garbage in the garbage can; we always
make sure that none of our garbage ends up on the ground. When
people litter, the garbage can take a long time to decompose and this can
be harmful to animals because they may see this as food. Ladner
Elementary also helps put garbage in the right place by getting the
classes to take turns picking up garbage outside every week. This makes
kids more aware of the importance of not littering. Third, instead of
throwing everything away we should recycle things that are recyclable.
This should be done because the materials you recycle are used to make
new items that people can use. The community I live in and my school
are awesome at recycling. At my school an example of a way we
recycle is every Thursday a group of grade sixes collect all the juice
boxes from each class. They dump out the juice boxes on the ground
and sort them into big different boxes. This requires a lot of a work but
the school recycles a great amount of juice boxes each year. Finally,
Ladner elementary is building a garden. A grade one class used to walk
to a local garden to participate in a garden program. Unfortunately the
garden has to be removed. This is why my school is in the process of
building a children’s garden. In my opinion the garden program is good
because the children get to learn about the environment, plant different
types of vegetables, fruits and flowers, see why we should keep our
planet clean and discover new things. As you can see my school, my
community and my family care about the environment and I hope that
soon people will get a better understanding of why the Earth is so
important. Just like our bodies we need to keep the Earth healthy by
taking care of it.
Eco-responsible Changes
by Kiana
Everyday, people are wasting electricity and not making ecofriendly
choices about the environment...but that can change. At Ladner Elementary School, we try our
hardest to always make sure that we, as a team, conserve energy, reduce, reuse, recycle, and
keep our Earth a better place to live in. One of the main things that Ladner Elementary tries to
work on is to reduce the amount of electricity we use at home and at school. For example, we
have a group of kids called the “S.W.A.T. Team” (Saving Watts At every Turn), who
plan out different ways to save energy in the school. On every Friday, the whole school has
“Lights Out Lunches”, where every classroom turns out the lights while we are eating our
lunches. Also, all of the classroom lights are on motion sensors so they automatically turn off if
nobody is currently in the room. Classes all try their best to be sure to recycle as much as
possible. For example, juice boxes, paper and some classes recycle all plastics from their
lunches. This will reduce the amount of garbage we need to put into the landfill. Ladner
Elementary School is also making a school garden from using the plants from our old garden,
which was at the Kirkland House. Students from Delta Secondary School
helped us build raised beds for the plants to grow in. At my house, my family and I are trying to
conserve electricity and energy daily. For instance, when we wash our clothes, we always use
cold water. I am always making sure that electronics and appliances are unplugged when they
are not being used. Also, we never turn the thermostat up because it uses lots of electricity and
it isn’t necessary when you can just put a sweater on if you’re cold. As well, if you’re hot, you
can just open the windows instead of turning on the air conditioning or fans. When my siblings
and I go to school, we walk every day, while my dad bikes to his work. Ever since our
community has started a composting program, it has
made a huge change. Now so many more people have a composting bin, which is great
because that means less garbage and a healthier environment to live in. In our community,
there are stores in walking distance from our houses so we don’t have to use cars that will
pollute our atmosphere. I think that if everybody tries their hardest to make sure that all of us are
making eco responsible
changes, everybody can make our Earth a healthier and cleaner environment to live in.
Eco-Responsible Changes by Tal
Our environment needs our help. All around the world people are throwing away
garbage that can be recycled. This causes pollution which is a horrible mess.
We need to work together to make Eco responsible changes.
In my school, community and family were coming up with solutions to decrease
the amount of pollution we have. There are two things in my school that I
really enjoy to have. And I think these are little things that really help to
start a change. We have S.W.A.T team which stands for Saving Watts at every
turn. They come up with energy saving ideas for example the students in swat
team go to each class rooms in lunch time checking for lights to be turned
off. At the beginning none of the classes turned off the lights, but S.W.A.T
team didn't give up and now every class lights are turned off every Friday
lunch. They also came up with an idea of Sweater Day. Almost every student in
our school participated in it and everybody enjoyed seeing each other’s
sweaters. The main point for this was to turn off the heating system so
everybody will stay warm without it.
Another way we are trying to help make our community a better place by making
school garden. Students in our school together with our community created a
wonderful school garden. Our garden is close by our clothing bins. The high
school students did their parts by building the raised beds. A local building
supply store gave us wood at cost. The local garden centre provided use with
the sand bed and we are using plants from our old garden which used to be in
Kirkland house. I can't wait until all the plants grow. Then in my family we
have compost. In our backyard my family makes a compost in the summer and
spring time. All our kitchen and plant waste are dumped in the compost. I
think this is a fine way of starting to make less waste go in the garbage.
Every year by having compost we reduce the amount of waste being taken to the
landfills by 30% when I first heard this I was surprised. If everybody will
do this think how much less landfills will have.
My family also turn off the lights when we are not using it and if it's dark
and scary we put on a very small night light that doesn’t take up that much
energy. We try not to waste as much water when we're showering even if you’re
having a bubble bath. We do everything that every other family does to try to
help the environment. But if you think about it one less family not doing
these things might not be a big deal but if none of these families do simple
little things. Like recycle, turn off the light, have compost in their
backyard and make sure the water isn’t leaking. Our beautiful planet would be
way worse without it.
And last but not lest my community. My community thinks green. Our
community also has hundreds of farms. We have great old beautiful trees rich
grass and we have different interesting birds. When you come out of our
community you see a huge screen that shows you images and tells you about
what's happening around us. there’s a lot of interesting things napping
around I remember there was a bottle drive and then the next day I looked at
the screen and it gave a huge number I can't remember what it was but it
reached more than I was expecting. That was very good we worked together to
help the environment. Also we had an earth run our community ran and all
their sponsor gave them money. All of the cash went to a earth helping
charity. If every community, school and family does this we might just make
responsible changes to our earth.
ECO RESPONSIBILITY by Coralie
Whether it be sooner or later, everyone will forget the importance of the
earth's health. They'd treat it as if it were a big trash can, or a toxic
wasteland. At Ladner Elementary School, and in my own community, we do
everything possible to make Ladner a better environmental place. Our
efforts and hard work really help change Ladner's pollution and energy
waste.
To emphasize the idea of recycling, our school has a bottle recycling
system. Each class has a bin to recycle their juice boxes and water bottles.
The way it works is, 6 peoples from each gr.6 class take turns collecting the
bins, sorting the bottles and returning the bins. After the bottles are sorted,
a parent helper brings them to the bottle return. This really helps because
we don't waste our bottles and we help keep our school healthier.
Ladner Elementary also has a school garden near the front of our field.
When the kindergarten classes went to the nursery for a field trip, they
realized how sick some of the plants were. So, they decided to bring them to
our school. We're almost finished building it, and soon, the plants will be
able to move in. The younger classes have committed to tending the garden
every day. Our school would like to keep the garden for years to come.
One of the most important groups at Ladner Elementary is the S.W.A.T.
team (Saving Watts At every Turn). The S.W.A.T team helps our school save
wasted energy, and gives us ideas for energy saving. They meet a few times
a week to create posters, put together announcements, and find new ideas.
For example, they come around the classes to turn the lights off when we're
not there, at recess, and on sunny days. On cold days, they tell us to bring
sweaters instead of turning up the heat. They also make sure that the
laptops are plugged in and turned off when they're not being used. The
S.W.A.T team plays a big role in conserving our school's energy. Without
them, our school would probably be wasting a lot of energy.
Where I live, we are very strict on keeping our complex eco-friendly
because there are so many little kids. To do this, the older kids (including
me) have started a little eco committee. We meet on Thursdays to discuss
new ways of making our complex a better environmental place. We put up
waterproof signs on the recycling bins so everyone would know what to put
where. We also put some up near the trash huge garbage can so people
would know what and what not to put in it. We also clean up the park when
it's littered and we put up signs in the park for people to remember to pick
up after their dogs. We do this voluntarily because we care for our
environment. It's always fun to help out.
Helping Ladner become a more eco-friendly place is what I and my
community like to do. We help because we want to keep the earth healthy
and it makes us feel good inside. At Ladner Elementary, we have a passion
for the eco-system and that's what our school is really concentrated on. It's
always a fun experience to help out Ladner, and the world.