We also ask that every parent chose food items for their children’s lunches that reduce waste. We are no longer using plastic bags or liners at our facility. ( England has now outlawed all plastic bags. San Francisco has also banned the use of all plastic bags.)

 

Look at the samples of products on display, in the lobby of the red school house that you can now purchase at the grocery store to wrap food without the use of plastic. We recycle everything that we can at our facility. We no longer will throw anything away from your child’s lunch. We are going to adopt the same policy that our national forest service has…packed it in…pack it out! Thank you for your consideration. A new ionization unit has now been installed in our pool to reduce the number of chemicals used for swimming. It really works.

 

We are committed to making a difference a little at a time. Hopefully we can inspire one another at the grass roots level and help to clean up the environment locally and affect the global status. Some of our parents have been leaving me articles to read, let me know if you have something you would like to share that we can pass on.

 

School Supplies: HCM is now ordering all of their dry goods from “Green Home,” a supplier out of the Bay area that carries recycled, compost able and earth friendly products. HCM will be ordering food products from “Pioneer Organics,” a supplier from Seattle. Both of these companies deliver to private homes and businesses. You can Google their names and look at their web sites if you are interested in having them deliver products to your home. We are now ordering many of our toys from companies like “Palumba,” that are making earth friendly products.

 

Ethical Shopping: When ever possible, HCM will make every effort to buy locally and purchase items which have as little impact on the environment as possible. We are going to sign up for the “Join the Co-op America’s Green Business Network”. We have subscribed to the “Little Green Steps” newsletter, a program developed to promote sustainability among preschools and childhood centers. The newsletters contain lots of hints on ways preschools can communicate environmental issues to children aged three to five.

 

Gardening Year Round: We will incorporate our gardening curriculum into our year round studies. We will set up worm boxes in the schools so that the children can recycle and compost daily. We want the children to directly experience the link between food and culture.

Green diapers: We are still in the R&D process of changing to a more environmentally friendly diaper. We have several choices to help the environmental impact of disposable diapers. Seventh Generation has put out a more earth friendly disposable, there is another G-Diaper we’re looking into and also the cotton diapers. Please give us your impute.

 

Lunches: We have located sources for buying water bottles that can be re-used. (It takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to produce enough plastic water bottles for just one year. 86% of those bottles end up in our land fills.) We will order some samples of items that might be helpful when considering a “no-waste lunch,” so you will have sources for purchasing alternative goods. We will set up re-cycling in every class so the kids can help.

 

Please continue to pack lunches in re-usable containers, and eliminate as much wasteful packaging as possible. Anything we can’t compost or re-cycle, will be returned in your child’s lunch box.

 

 

Greener Hazel Creek:

 

We are now using all bio-degradable products for cleaning the school. Our school is switching all of our light bulbs to longer lasting bulbs. We also want to start using bio-degradable diapers made by First Generation. Parents will supply these diapers for their child.