Avoiding BPA and Phthalates

Reducing Your Exposure to BPA
Bisphenol A has been used as an ingredient in consumer products for a long time and is difficult to avoid. In some cases, alternatives are available. Consider these tips, especially if you are or may become pregnant or are choosing a product for a child:
http://www.oeconline.org/pollutioninpeople/solutions/bpa/document_view

Reducing Your Exposure to Phthalates
Products containing phthalates are ubiquitous in our society, but you can reduce your and your family’s exposure to phthalates by avoiding PVC and purchasing products from companies that have eliminated phthalates. When you can choose, try to use metal, glass, ceramic, wooden, or other natural non-PVC products.
http://www.oeconline.org/pollutioninpeople/solutions/phthalates/document_view

Think Before You Pink

Yoplait's fall campaign, Save Lids to Save Lives, continues to urge consumers to buy pink-lidded cups of Yoplait yogurt. For each pink lid mailed back to the company by December 31, Yoplait donates ten cents to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, up to $1.5 million. Sadly, a woman would have to eat three containers of Yoplait every day during the four-month campaign to raise $36 for the cause--and the yogurt is made from cows treated with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). Recent studies show that rBGH dairy products may be linked with an increased risk of breast, colon, and prostate cancer.

Kids and Nature

Video: Children Practice Real Science  Thousands of students monitor migration patterns of butterflies and other species as part of this online project.  

A Mobile Hands-On Science Program Captivates
An arcane science turns into a traveling circus that's fizzy, frantic, and fun.

Readings, Viewings, and Listenings
Free registration may be required and news-sensitive links may expire over the next week.

Woods Take Place of Test
"They're out here getting readings, looking at plants, animals, leaves -- everything. We've got 120 students out here working hard," said biology teacher Claudia King, who has coordinated this culminating project for seventeen years. -- Olympian (Olympia, Washington)

Related Edutopia article: How to Make Being Outdoors In

Program Involves Kids in Protecting Waterways

Sheri Faust, environmental educator for the St. Clair County Health Department, said that the Adopt-a-Stream program "gets students out doing chemical analysis of the water." -- Times Herald (Port Huron, Michigan)

Related Edutopia article: Children Champion the Environment

Green Love

In the end,
we will conserve only what we love,
we will love only what we understand,
we will understand only what we are taught.

Baba Dioum,
Senegalese Conservationis

http://www.greenschoolsalliance.org

2008 Green Cup Challenge

Explore Nature

Nature Explore is a complete program of fun, effective resources to help educators, families, and anyone working to connect young children with nature. Nature Action Collaborative for Children: http://www.arborday.org/explore/nacc/

Citizen Scientists Monitor Climate Change

AMC Mountain Plant Monitors - New Hampshire
http://www.outdoors.org/conservation/mountainwatch/mtplant.cfm
AMC is looking for volunteers to help watch certain plants every year near their facilities in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Over time AMC will determine how plants in the mountains may be responding to trends in average annual air temperature and other weather related variables. Hikers will be able to submit observations and hence take an active role in the collection of scientific data. Observations made by these citizen scientists will create a baseline of information that will help detect and document ecological impacts of a changing climate.

Forest Flower Watch

AMC needs you to help to document forest flowering times across the Northeast this spring and summer and especially during June; which is Flower Watch Month

How to monitor:

• Obtain the field guide and data sheet by downloading pdf file below, request the materials to be mailed to you (Include "Forest Flowers" as subject line), or obtain a copy at New Hampshire North Country AMC destination.

http://www.outdoors.org/conservation/mountainwatch/upload/ForestFlowerWeb08.pdf

Forest Flower field guide and 2 data sheets pdf
(6 pages) print double-sided (read this printing hint to keep paper use down)

• Go to any mountain trail above ~ 1,500 feet
• Staying on the trail, locate a targeted forest plant (see field guide)
• Record on data sheet date, detailed location and whether plant is before flowering, flowering, or not flowering
• Return data sheet to AMC. It's that simple!

If you want to be more involved then sign up for our Mountain Watch Adopt-A-Peak monitoring program. Targeted species for forest monitoring include painted trillium, bunchberry, Canada mayflower, blue-bead lily, wood sorrel, and hobblebush.

Food Scraps Aren't Waste

Recently I read about a school in California that adopted a new zero-waste system to divert as much trash as possible from the local landfill by recycling and composting as much waste from the cafeteria and classrooms as possible. Kids learn that FOOD SCRAPS AREN'T WASTE, THEY'RE REUSABLE ENERGY! They learn to put all food scraps in composting bins and recyclables in other bins.

In this program, the smallest details matter. Milk and juice cartons out of the cafeteria come unglazed for easier composting. Even the cafeteria's plates, bowls and utensils — once a huge part of the school's trash — are put in the composting bin. They're made of corn.

Partnering with waste haulers and commercial compost facilities, the schools teach the basics of waste diversion. Compost is a soil amendment for enriching the fertility of the soil.

In a recent conversation with Rachel Carlson, our Sandy Island Food Service Director, we may have an opportunity to implement a similar program for Sandy Island in the future. Stay tuned.

RESOURCES

Resourceful Schools
http://www.resourcefulschools.org/

Don’t Throw Away That Food: Strategies for Record-Setting Waste Reduction, US EPA
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/reduce/food/foodmain.pdf

Be Smart. Reducing Food Waste. Think a little about waste reduction, it can save a lot.
http://www.besmart.org/festival/foodwaste.html

Kids Zero Waste Poster, New Zealand
http://www.kidsrecycle.org/posters.php