The Green and Food Committee

Mission Statement

A green school is a school building that creates a healthy environment conducive to learning and teaching while saving energy and resources. A green school community practices and promotes the sustainable use of our limited natural resources through recycling, composting and reducing our waste materials. The Green and Food Committee works collaboratively with parents, teachers, school staff and students to ensure that people learning and working in the school have healthy air to breathe, enjoy maximum access to daylight, spend their time in an environment that connects them to the natural world through plantings and gardens, respect the true value of water and strive to conserve its use. Working together to create a green school provides many opportunities for us to teach and learn as a community about our environment and the ways to live, learn and work in balance with the natural world.

Want to become a BNS Green&Food committee volunteer?

Activities

We focus on further integrating our green projects into the culture of the school. To that end we work to make gardening more sustainable; the Eco-Casita ready for small and whole class outdoor learning; the Kids’ Kitchen filled with adults ready to guide healthy cooking activities with whole class and/or small groups; and the STUDIO…the indoor science, sustainability project room alive with students expressing their learning through building and modeling.

Green and Food Committee events include one or more Garden to Café Days–where the cafeteria staff prepares crops raised by kids and their teachers and the Ecorama, our outdoor fair which is a celebration of sustainable learning. Ecorama is a celebration of the Earth. Unstructured. Kids wander and taste and interact and explore . Kids take turns being teachers and learners. Inter-generational. Activities use sustainable materials and promote the health of the Earth and all of its inhabitants. They include opportunities to make art, take part in music, eat, play and appreciate the marvels of some of Earth’s nonhuman inhabitants. To see that people are working on solutions to the world’s problems. To come out of it optimistic about what can be done. To make you feel good to be alive and appreciate the miracle of being human on this planet. And to be with a group of like minded caring people.

LINK to blog with overview of Ecorama

Accomplishments

The Green and Food Committee has implemented these programs, greening 610 Henry. Activities include:

  • Lunchtime recycling and composting

  • Replacement of foam trays with pulp trays

  • Elimination of sugary chocolate milk at lunch

  • Rainwater catchment system

  • Raised garden beds

  • Eco-casita outdoor classroom

  • Removal of PCB light fixtures

  • Green Studio 106A

  • Science/Sustainability Family Nights

  • Kids Kitchen

  • Green Recess

  • Our chickens!

Contact

Contact the Green and Food Committee: Barbara Tarragon at barbara@bns146.org