Friday, August 28, 2009

A Few Green Thoughts

I was reading our local paper this morning. In the opinion section was a column from my school superintendent. He always writes thought-provoking pieces. This one is about environmental stewardship. Our county schools are stepping up to the plate for Mother Earth. Students have been recycling for a while, but efforts have improved along with a new initiative to reduce and resuse county wide. The superintendent asked, "How can we ... be better stewards of our environment?"
I wrote him a comment that follows. "Something small: kids should be encourgaged to reuse school supplies from year to year (backpacks, pencil boxes, pencils). How many people just throw perfectly good things away to start "fresh" each year?
Something tall: imagine the impact on the environment and kids' health if schools made use of sidewalks and crossing guards! It is ridiculous that kids who live across the street from a school have to ride the bus to get there!
Speaking of health: they may be good for the environment, but those cold-water-only faucets that turn off immediately are not good for kids' health. Kids don't want to wash their hands anyway, and these faucets require too much work! Plus the kids have to touch them several times (to keep turning the water back on)to get hands clean. Touching a faucet= touching germs. The cold water does not help fight germs as well, either. "

I do hate those faucets!

However, my family is blessed to have a successful and innovative school system that welcomes parental involvement. I love that the seed of environmental responsibility (which goes hand in hand with economic responsibility) is being planted in our community.

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