NNHS Enviro Club

Blog Action Day!

2007-10-15T20:32:00.000-04:00

Our first post of the 2007-2008 school year is for today, Blog Action Day. Today, bloggers all over the world-wide-web publish posts on one important issue. Over ten thousand posts from companies like Google, to your very own environmental club, to everyday people trying to make a difference.

This year, the Environmental Club is reaching for new heights, and working on really making a difference to the NNHS Community and beyond. Leading the club this year is Danny Piccirillo, Laura Nichols, Alison Denn, and Henry Carrera. We've got big plans for this year like events, cleaning up the school's recycling, and getting involved with campaigns and projects like the new high school building plans. It's another new year!

Climate Crisis Essay Contest

2007-03-10T17:48:00.000-05:00

The global warming crisis is upon us. Scientists agree that unless we begin to substantially reduce our CO2 emissions, erratic climate patterns will continue and intensify leading to sea levels rising by 25 feet or more, as well as famine, disease, and homelessness on a scale never before witnessed in human history. Our community must begin to conserve, to reduce our energy use, and we must do it now. The Green Decade Coalition/Newton with funding from NSTAR and the Newton Schools Foundation is offering an essay contest on this topic, and we hope to read the winning essays in our local paper later this year.

Newton Student Contest Rules

Newton energy consumption continues to climb in spite of increased awareness of the harm caused by CO2 emissions and global warming. The purpose of this essay contest and the publicity it will generate is to increase awareness of the issue amongst Newton residents and to encourage them to choose more energy efficient products and to waste less energy.

You may want to consider tackling one or more of the following questions in your essay:

Do you think that people understand the consequences of global warming on the future livability of the planet? Do they understand that conserving can mitigate the trend of global warming? If not, how can this awareness be created?
Once people understand the need for reducing energy consumption, what ideas do you have to help people conserve?
Should people be rewarded for conserving?
What are you and/or your friends doing to conserve energy consumption? What is your family doing to conserve? How are you helping?
People sometimes equate conserving with sacrifice rather than merely cutting out waste. This can be a barrier. What are your suggestions for removing this psychological barrier? What would motivate you, your family, and your friends to conserve? What, if any, barriers need to be overcome? How can this be achieved?
What creative or new ideas do you have about conservation? Have you tried implementing them? What was your experience?

In addition to the essay, you must list 20 actions that you and/or your family can take to conserve energy. There are many websites and books focused on energy and climate that can help you; please choose your favorite actions with care!

Eligibility

The Essay Contest is open to all students in grades 1-12 who either live or go to school in Newton.

Essay Requirements

Essays should be no longer than 1500 words (excluding the 20 key action points), typed and double-spaced. Students must produce their own work, using information from other sources where appropriate. All references must be clearly marked and can appear as parenthetical citations, endnotes or footnotes. Materials used for research that are not cited in the student's essay should be listed in a bibliography page at the end.

Students must include a title page with their submission stating their name, address, telephone number, school, and grade level. They should not include their name on any other page of their essay.

Prizes

Elementary	Junior High	High School
1st Prize $75	1st Prize $150	1st Prize $300
2nd Prize $50	2nd Prize $100	2nd Prize $200
3rd Prize $35	3rd Prize $75	3rd Prize $100
4 Distinction Prizes @$25	4 Distinction Prizes @ $25	4 Distinction Prizes @ $25

Submissions

Student submissions should be sent to: The Green Decade Coalition P.O. Box 590242, Newton, MA 02459 post-marked no later than March 15, 2007.

Dear Newton Resident:

Here is your chance to shine. While the students are working on their conservation essays, it is your turn to do the actual conserving!

Contest Objective:

To reduce household energy consumption in Newton.

The Contest will allow the residents of Newton to flex their conservation muscles by demonstrating who can reduce their energy consumption the most.

How to Enter:

Submit copies of either your electric or heating bills for any one month period ending no later than April 15, 2007 along with the same period in 2006.
On a separate sheet of paper included with your submission, state your current usage consumption, the usage for the same period in 2006 and percentage reductions for electric and/or heating. For example, if you used 250 therms this period, and 400 therms the equivalent period last year, the percentage reduction would be (400-250)/400 = 37.5%. Also include your name, address, and telephone number.
Tell us how you accomplished your reductions. You must be able to demonstrate that reductions were achieved through conservation alone.
Submissions should be sent to: The Green Decade Coalition P.O. Box 590242, Newton, MA 02459 post-marked no later than April 15, 2007.

To Win:

Reduce your electric and/or heating bill by the greatest percentage of any Newton household.

Prizes:

The winner of both the electric and heating categories will each receive a $200 gift certificate from Whole Foods Market. All winners will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, 2007.

Examples of Disqualifiers:

Energy usage reductions achieved by:

leaving town for the month of March.
reducing the number of people in the household.

View a printable copy at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ajfmqrj9wk72_4fkfxcv

Sign up for Solar!

2007-03-10T17:35:00.000-05:00

An amazing company called Citizenrē offers a great solar solution for any homeowner. Most people avoid switching to solar because the initial investment of the solar panels are so heavy. Citizenrē solves this problem by making the investment for you by purchasing solar panels, paying for the installation and maintenance and charging you a fixed rate for the energy it produces.

You save money (and the environment!) because they charge you at a fixed rate lower than what your current utility company charges you and you can sell the excess energy you generate with your solar panels back to your utility company. Over a period of 25 years you can save over $40,000!

Seem too good to be true? You obviously benefit because you don't have to pay as much money for your electricity bill and you don't have to suffer that huge initial payment for the solar panels and Citizenrē makes a profit by charging you for the electricity over a period of time so that the initial heavy investment that they made for you pays off.

Sign up now at http://renu.citizenre.com/

Movie Series

2007-02-17T00:45:00.000-05:00

Just posting a short notice letting you all know what's been up. We ended up showing Too Hot Not to Handle and An Inconvenient Truth for our movie series and we hope that you either got to show up or that you will have seen the movie on your own time. Let us know if you have questions or comments or anything that you'd like to discuss.

Campaign! Store! Contest!

2006-11-30T15:46:00.000-05:00

Announcing a campaign to raise awareness, the coming of our new online store, and a contest-

Campaign

First off, we would like to announce an ongoing campaign that we are launching to raise awareness about environmental issues. We are looking for facts, tips, additional messages, and possibly art and images to post around the school.

Here are some examples of what kind of stuff we're looking for:

Fact: Recycling one aluminum can saves an amount of energy equivalent to half that can filled with gasoline.
Fact/Tip: The cleaning products that are harmful to the environment, are also more toxic to you! Try biodegradable cleaners.
Tip: Buying sustainable, organic, locally grown food is good for you and the environment-- not to mention it's so much more flavorful!
Message: Think Green.

We would like to have club meetings where we could discuss these ideas and put together posters with these messages.

It might help to brainstorm with other NNHS Enviro Club members in the discussion group!

Online Store

We would also like to be able to offer organic cotton t-shits available at an online store that feature the facts, tips, and messages from our campaign. The club leaders will decide which messages, facts, and tips we will use on the shirts. We may also be able to print on other products too! If you have any facts, tips, messages, or clever 'strings' for the store please send them to us along with a source for all facts; all facts must be verifiable and reasonably recent. Along with these messages we'd like to apply a new official logo that the NNHS Enviro Club can be recognized by which brings us to the contest.

Contest

We will be holding a concept contest for our new official club logo (Don't worry, we're not being branded). We will put this logo on our site, on products that are to be offered at our online store, etc. The final product must be in uncompressed JPEG or PNG digital image file formats and should be as relatively large. There are very few requirements. The logo must include "NNHS Enviro Club" and the dimensions should easily be scalable to an icon sized image. You may begin with a vector image and create different sized images from wallpaper to icon sized and send us the entire package.

We strongly encourage you to share ideas and upload your designs to our discussion group for feedback and discussion. Everyone should join the group to start reviewing ideas. We will announce a closing date for final submissions and we will choose the winning design. We are accepting up to two designs per person. The winning designer will receive one free t-shirt with our mission statement and the logo they created for us on it!

Please pass this on to friends who you know are interested in graphic design.

It's a New Year!

2006-10-10T02:20:00.000-04:00

Welcome to a new year of the NNHS Enviro Club! Well, a new school year anyway :)

Our mission statement - "The NNHS Enviro Club works to reverse environmental issues through education, collaboration, and action."

Our first meeting is next Thursday, October 19th. We will have food, drinks and, candy! Feel free to bring your own in as well, as long as it's in some way environmentally friendly; organic, sustainable, and/or locally grown. We will be able to tell you more about what we have planned for the year and you will have a chance to meet the student leaders and advisors!

The club meets primarily during Thursday X-blocks in room 202 and we will send out a notice in advance to notify you of upcoming meetings.

We have a lot of new, exciting things in store for you all! We're all really excited for a great year of community service, fun activities, and other celebrations to help spread the message of environmentalism.

Here are a few of the projects and events we are planning so far:

Showing movies

An Inconvenient Truth
Too Hot Not to Handle

Cell Phone Recycling
Give Presentations at Middle Schools
Collaborate with EEC

Improve School Lunches
Bake Sale

Trash Pickup fund raiser
Earth Day
Arbor Day

Plant a tree

Charles River Cleanup
World Environment Day
Newton Environmental Fair
Earthfest
Locker Cleanout

These events are open to everyone and we will be publicizing them as they come up. We hope that your interest in environmental issues will help drive lots of participation within the club to organize great events and have lots of fun!

Check out our new website!
http://nnhs.enviro.club.googlepages.com/

It is currently under construction and will be developing over the next week or so. There are a lot of loose ends but please be patient and we will fix them ASAP. In the meantime we're sorry for any inconvenience.

We are always open to feedback, questions, comments, suggestions, and new ideas so feel free to email us at any time!
NNHS.Enviro.Club@Gmail.com

Leaders
Lyuda Kovalchuke
Elena Swartz
Fanny Wu
Danny Piccirillo

Advisors
Ms. Dannenberg
Mr. Snow

Work Study Program

2006-09-06T19:13:00.000-04:00

The NNHS Enviro Club is starting a work study program and we would love for you to get involved! The work study program offers a credit and cash incentive to help the environment and get involved with the Club. We're looking for motivated and dedicated people who have a serious desire to help and probably three lucky students will be accepted!

Students will receive $6.75 for every hour of work and 1.25 credits towards graduation. Participating students will manage the recycling throughout Newton North High School, a task previously carried out voluntarily by dedicated environmentalists. We will be holding two informational sessions for the Work Study in Room 202 after-school on September, Wednesday and Thursday the 20th and 21st. At the sessions we will review the general information on the application and if time permits, show the students what their duties will consist of. The more applicants we can get the better, so please, if you're interested, show up!

Participants will:

Empty recycling from big blue bins
Separate redeemable and nonredeemable recyclables
Take out nonredeemable recycleables to the curb on Friday mornings
Bring redeemable to Shaws in Newtonville
- Collect cash to support club
- Deposit money to Ms. Dannenberg, Rm 201
Attend mandatory monthly meetings with the Environmental Club leaders
- Flexible and at the convenience of all involved

*If, when primary tasks are complete, time commitments haven't been met, program members will use their skills to help the club in other areas to satisfy the time commitments.

Contact: Peg McGowan is the NNHS Work Study Coordinator and can be contacted regarding the program at peg_mcgowan@newton.mec.edu The club can be reached via email at NNHS.Enviro.Club@Gmail.com

This is a great opportunity for students who want to make a difference within the environment and contribute to the club.

Great Thanks,
The NNHS Enviro Club

Newton Community Education Presents...

2006-09-06T18:43:00.000-04:00

A Conversation with Ross Gelbspan

Monday, September 11

at 7:00 p.m.

Newton North High School

Room 217

Ross Gelbspan was a longtime reporter and editor at the Philadelphia Bulletin, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. He covered the United Nations Conference on the Environment in Stockholm in 1972 and addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998. The author of The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover-Up, The Prescription and Boiling Point, he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Please join us in welcoming Ross Gelbspan as he presents a journalist's overview of the climate crisis. The talk will provide a brief treatment of the science and a look at some of the recent impacts of our increasingly unstable climate. It will also highlight the political, economic and equity dimensions of the climate issue, including its implications for security in a post 9/11 world. It will detail as well a long and effective campaign of resistance by the fossil fuel lobby—and some recent seat changes in the corporate and political arenas. The talk will also outline a set of solution strategies which are designed to reduce global emissions by the 70 percent required to allow the climate to re-stabilize—as well as create large numbers of jobs, particularly in developing countries. That solution also contains the seeds for some of the most threatening non-climate problems facing us today: diplomatic dysfunction, anti-US terrorism and economic stagnation. A truly appropriate response to this challenge could substantially increase the wealth, equity and stability in the global economy, even as it generates a much greater appreciation of the need for sustainability in all aspects of our lives. Finally, a proper response to the climate threat could also provide a pilot model to begin to put democratically-determined boundaries around the operations of multi-national corporations: in short, to begin to democratize the global economy.

Tickets Still Available!
$5.00 admission - students free
Contact Newton Community Education
for more info, or to reserve your space!

Newton Community Education
Room M-5, Newton North High School
617-559-6999
http://www.newtoncommunityed.org
https://newtoncommunityed.org/viewDesc.php?CourseNumber=X1562
http://www.greendecade.org/events.html

An Environmental Fair

2006-07-12T13:58:00.000-04:00

Join us next Wednesday, July 19th for an environmental fair where you can have fun, hang out, and learn about all sorts of cool, earth friendly things from local organizations and businesses. The City of Newton, along with these organizations and businesses, have a lot to offer you. Discover all of the great resources available to you to help the planet and improve your life! The fair is from 4pm-7pm at Auburndale Cove. We contacted Ben Provan, the man behind the fair and here's what he had to say about himself and the fair:

"The environmental fair is designed to connect Newton residents with local programs, businesses, and services that empower them to make environmentally friendly choices and be aware of environmental programs and initiatives in the area. Residents will find out what they can do right now, from proper recycling and composting to energy saving products and organic foods. The fair is from 4-7 PM on Wednesday July 19th at the picnic area of Auburndale Cove.

About me: I created the fair in partnership with Courtney Forrester, the City of Newton Recycling Manager, as part of a course I'm taking with Landmark Education. I'm a recent college graduate from Cornell University in Mechanical Engineer and I now work at Bose Corporation in Framingham. I have a passion for the environment and for transforming the way we as humans relate to it. Other passions: I love biking (to work), backpacking, gardening, and playing the saxophone and guitar."

-Ben Provan

We're hoping that we will be able to keep this fair going for years to come as it's importance and influence on the Newton community increase. Any help with publicity would be great, so let your friends and family know about it and take them to go. If you're interested, help out by distributing and posting up flyers (preferably on recycled paper!). We hope to see you there and we'll have pictures and more up next week!

A message from the Blue Man Group

2006-07-02T23:26:00.000-04:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8453442377878175440

Distributed Computing

2006-06-19T21:48:00.000-04:00

Did you know that you can help predict our planets future? That's right! ClimatePrediction.net, the BBC, and BOINC, have teamed up to create the largest climate change experiment EVER! The project takes advantage of a unique process called distributed computing.

Distributed computing is similar to a giant virtual supercomputer but it can be much more effective than any supercomputer in the world can. This technique is extremely effective for a team of scientists who are trying to solve a really big and complicated problem and need a lot of computing power to do so. Instead of using a supercomputer, which would be more expesnsive and less effective, they can use a method that is much cheaper, and with more collective CPU's, can get even more computing power. The team can use a variety of development platforms to put together a project that volunteers, like you, can contribute to.

How do you contribute? Easy, you just download their project client and install it on your computer and it will take your idle (spare) CPU, which is the computing power that your computer is not using, and it will make lots and lots of calculations in the background and send the results back to the scientists! You don't even have to do a thing! You just download the file, install it, register, leave your computer on and it will run in the background! More information on distributed computing and a list of projects can be found at DistributedComputing.info

Why?

Climate change, and our response to it, are issues of global importance, affecting food production, water resources, ecosystems, energy demand, insurance costs and much else.

- climateprediction.net

All you have to do is download the climate model from the site and it will run in the background. Once you set it up it won't bother you again, and all you have to do is use your computer like you normally would and it wont affect your everyday life. So what are you waiting for!?

Take part in
the largest
climate change
experiment ever

An Inconvenient Truth - Truely, A Gloabl Warning

2006-06-12T23:52:00.000-04:00

On Friday, June 2nd, I took a group of friends and NNHS Enviro Club members along with myself to go see An Inconvenient Truth.

Will Feinstein (a friend of ours who came with us) says:

An Inconvenient Truth was very informative and well done. It does change the way you think about the issues of global warming. Al Gore is surprisingly compelling.

An Inconvenient Truth is at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. On June 6th it was the #9 film in only 77 theaters and the final weekend box office was $1.35M. The per screen average was a weekend leading $17,615 which was over times X-Men 3. By June 12th, An Inconvenient Truth had another great weekend at the box office taking in $1.5M in just 122 theaters for a healthy $12,333 per screen average, beating The Break-Up. In downtown Portland, Oregon only two hours after An Inconvenient Truth opened on three screens, a notice announced that six of the day's showings had been sold out.

"In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."

-Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

An Inconvenient Truth is the first ever carbon-neutral documentary. NativeEnergy, Participant Productions, and Paramount Classics, joined forces to offset 100% of the carbon dioxide emmisions from promotional activities associated with the film, and even ground and air transportation.

I know that those who came to see it with us ejoyed the film, but I hope all of you who have seen it on your own or with us were deeply affected by An Inconvenient Truth. If you haven't yet, go see it in theatres! Paramount Classics donates 5% of ticket sales with a minimum guarantee of $500,000 to Alliance for Climate Protection, a new bipartisan climate effort. You can see trailers for the movie on the post we made previously about An Inconvenient Truth and Movies - Global Warming in the Mainstream.

See An Inconvenient Truth for Free
If you've already seen it, you can now encourage others see the film! This movie is showing in over 400 theares now, but many people live far from these cinemas and don't have the money to pay for the trip and the movie. If you're one of the people or you just haven't seen it, you can go for free! Thanks to sharethetruth.us, lots of donations are being collected and money is available to help you see the movie for free. Who can resist a free movie?

EarthFest 2006

2006-06-02T22:55:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, May 27th, was the 13th annual WBOS 92.9 EarthFest, the biggest free radio station concert in the country, at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade, along the Charles River in Boston. Tons of people came to the event and it was nothing short of another great EarthFest success. Over 100,000 people showed up from noon to 6 pm to this family-friendly event for free music, food, clothing, and other gear. Sponsored by Whole Foods Market, among others, EarthFest 2006 had these artists on the main stage: Los Lonely Boys, James Blunt, Brandi Carlile, The Fray and The Alternate Routes. Throughout the area were eco tips posted up on living a greener lifestyle and providing useful information on green shopping at Whole Foods Market. There were nearly 100 tents/booths offering food sampling, exhibits, and educational displays staffed by event sponsors and local non-profit and environmental organizations, including the Charles River Watershed Association, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Project Joy, Greyhound Friends, Sierra Club, and Amnesty International to promote a healthy and Earth-friendly outlook! One of your fellow NNHS Enviro Club members, Jonathan Berman, was working at the Penta Water booth with his sister, providing free sample bottles of the water. Penta Water isn't just any bottled water, it is hundreds of times cleaner than many of the bottles spring waters. Penta water goes through an 11-hour, 13-step purification process, leaving it to be the cleanest-known bottled water. Jonathan gave me a bottle and it tasted great! It tasted like water- and only water! Here's what he had to say about EarthFest-

EarthFest was really great. Several organizations had booths to promote organic and sustainable foods and other earth-friendly products (the food was great). There was also a row of environmentally friendly movements that handed out notices, buttons, stickers, massive balloons, etc. There was information on renewable energy and it's importance with solar cells, and a wind turbine set up on the back of a truck. There was also a car there that ran on food oils. Staffing one of the booths at EarthFest was an eye-opening experience, seeing all of these local organizations in one place working to influence the community. There were so many people watching the show and checking out all the booths and everyone was having a good time.

-Jonathan Berman

I hope all of you who went to EarthFest '06 had a great time and that everyone will make it to EarthFest next year!

MOVIES - Global Warming in the Mainstream

2006-05-23T15:41:00.000-04:00

First, on April 21st, 1998, Nova's "Warnings from the Ice" questions the dangers ofthe melting polar icecaps was aired on PBS.
On April 11th, 2000, Nova and Frontline's "What's Up With The Weather?" was aired on PBS.
Over five years later, on Wednesday, November 2, 2005, "Global Warming: The Signs and the Science" by Nova was aired on PBS.
On April 18th of this year, PBS aired Nova's "Dimming the Sun."
Next, on Saturday, the 22nd, Earth Day, HBO premiered "Too Hot Not to Handle"
Tomorrow, "An Inconvenient Truth" comes out in theatres.

Next Friday,
PLEASE JOIN US to see An Inconvenient Truth
And invite your friends too! (send us their names and email address so that we can add them to the list)

PLEASE READ ON FOR MORE INFORMATION

A film by PARTICIPANT PRODUCTIONS
http://www.participantproductions.com/
Please visit their online activism site
http://www.participate.net/

VIEW THE TRAILERS

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2078944470709189270

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8986925729646026346

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6828541085076068437

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4751045793350356310

Please SIGN THE PLEDGE to see the truth, TAKE ACTION, and more on the web site
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

DETAILS~
*Details on movie showtimes are currently unavailable but will be updated soon. (you will be notified)
*Date and time will be around Friday, June 2nd, after school.

This movie is supposed to be an extremely thrilling and captivating documentary on the effects of global warming. At Sundance it recived three standing ovations.

Charles River Cleanup Accomplished!

2006-05-05T00:09:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone!

We just wanted to thank all the participants at the Charles River Cleanup for helping out! The cleanup was a great success! We all had loads of fun and cleaned up loads of trash (and got a free bike!). Sarah was the clean up leader for our little brigade and got things rolling.

First we split up into small groups of 2 or 3 and tackled different parts of the river. About five of us were lucky enough to use the boots that Ms. D-R provided us so that we could venture out into the river to pick up trash that had migrated to the bottom (only with the strategic use of sticks, of course). Some of us were more lucky than others and did NOT get wet or have a nice sample of the Charles River on our pants (Elena and Melanie were not so fortunate). Armed with blue, yellow and lilac covered gloves, we toughed it out and removed most of the smaller pieces of trash. However, we DID find some very interesting objects in the river. We found a couple of tires, a bike in complete working order, a photo frame and two or three shopping carts.

The group worked together fantastically! It was a very successful clean up and a beautiful day to help clean up the environment. We all recieved t-shirts for our efforts and chilled out afterwards with some delicious cake, provided by the very talented Maddy Barry. Everyone had a lot of fun and we hope that everyone will be a part of it again next year! Thanks to everyone who helped out!

Charles River Cleanup 2006

Victoria's Dirty Secret

2006-04-16T14:33:00.000-04:00

Update! - We were featured on the Forest Ethics Community Blog!
See it @ http://www.forestethics.org/article.php?id=1455

Would you ever suspect a famous lingerie store to be one of the leading forests destroyers in the country? Probably not, but if you think about it, it makes sense. What's their leading form of advertising? Those annoying catologs that they mail to everyone, everywhere. I'm sure most of you have porbably and quite possibly still get them in the mail. They mail over ONE MILLION of these EVERY SINGLE DAY and around 395 MILLION A YEAR. They get all of the paper for these catalogs from paper suppliers who are a huge part of the 2 acres of forests bieng cut down EVERY MINUTE from endangered north american forests. You can read more facts here.

Now you could argue that everyone else is doing it and wonder, "Why target Victoria's Secret?" Well, this is the hard part of changing things for the better within corporate america. It all has to start somewhere. Why then, was Victoria's Secret chosen? The main reasons probably include that they are one of the leading forests destroyers, plus a campaign of this style can gain a lot of media attention. Most of all, exposing Victoria's Secret would not only gain publicity, but expose all the paper suppliers and force them all to change the industry.

What we are asking and why- We want them to use recycled paper (at least 50% in five years), and to refuse to purchase paper from suppliers that took from endangered forests. This would force their paper suppliers to start selling more recycled products, and save the endangered forests from being used for unrecycled paper. Which would reach out far beyond just Victoria's Secret's forest consumption. We also want them to reduce their paper use entirely.

Another obstacle, or lame excuse for paper buyers, is that a crisp image doest come out as nicely on recycled paper, and it costs more. Does this excuse them for all the damage they've done? No way! They can still get a good image on post-consumer recycled paper, and they have the buying power to bring sustainable paper purchasing to the catalog industry, which is an essential reason to target them. Now instead of mailing our endangered forests to everyone, try sending it to the people who care! And only the people who care! Another thing; there's this thing called email. They should consider using it.

For all of this and more, I decided to volunteer for the April 11th day of action and bring a group of friends to a local store to hand out information and postcards to be mailed to the CEO of Victoria's Secret's parent company. This action was one of 225 events across the country! This was part of a campaign by called part of .

They have already gained great media coverage by Time Magazine, and Fortune/CNN Money. Forests Ethics has already gotten Staples and Office Depot to create great new environmental policies but one office giant still remains completely untame...Officemax. One by one they changed Staples and Office Depot, now it's Officemax's turn.

What was our day of action like? Well it went well for the circumstances. Other protests were great and got a lot of attention but they had more supplies, people, and planning. We, on the other hand, did not have enough supplies, but that was okay because the nearest store was at the Chestnut Hill Mall which is a very nice upper-class mall. If we had brought big banners and signed we wouldn't have been allowed to talk in the store. All we used were; postcards to the CEO, fact sheets (double sided to save trees!), and informational pamphlets.

First I had to send a few emails out to everyone and ended up with a group of 11 friends that came-
Jonathan Berman
Kevin Yan
Kristof Janezic
Jazzy PS
Eve Asher
Jenny Wu
Mike Thomas
Sam Wyler
Hanna Reder
Angie Head
And Me! (Danny P)

We carpooled to the mall (Thanks for the rides Kyle Janezic and Dad!), then we gathered up all of the supplies and decided how we were going to go about doing this. There were very few people in the mall at that time. We went at around 3:30 after school. So we just went over our Action Toolkit and reviewed all the information we had to know in case anyone asked and then we got to it. We split up and tried to get as many people interested as we could.

Many people were extremely stuck up and resistant but after getting around 25 postcards signed the mall manager and a bunch of security guards confrtonted us and asked us what we were doing. We told them and the manager told us that we couldn't be doing that and he had to ask us to leave.

He requested some information, so we gave him a fact sheet, a postcard, and a pamphlet. Then I asked him to deliver two petitions, one which anyone could sign and the other for members of NNHS, to the manager of the Victoria's Sectret store but he said he wouldn't and he only asked for the other stuff to read for himself. You can sign an individual letter too! They escorted us out of the mall, and sent two guards in a secuity vehicle to make sure that we were going completely off of mall property.

So we went across the street to the public parking lot and distributed the last of our supplies on peoples windshields, half of which were over-consuming SUV's (super useless vehicles) and my personal favorite killer, the Hummer.

After we were done, we got rides down to the pizza shop and got our own rides home from there. It was a lot of fun and we were doing something good! Maybe I'll do it again sometime and hand out information at the school instead. You can come too!

You can speak out here.

Alert! - t-shirts & Charles River Cleanup

2006-03-16T17:21:00.000-05:00

Hello EnviroClub!

Two Important Things:

First off: We NEED to know if you want an Environmental Club shirt, so if you haven't told us that you want one, please notify us ASAP!

Second; the Charles River Watershed Association's 7th ANNUAL EARTH DAY CHARLES RIVER CLEANUP is coming up soon! It is going to be on Saturday, April 29th (the Saturday after April vacation), from 9am-12pm. The cleanup involves over 1,000 volunteers helping to beautify the Charles River, picking up trash and cleaning the riverbanks at over 40 sites from Dover to Boston. We are going to put together a group to do this, but we need to know who wants to participate! We need to have a number relatively soon, so please respond ASAP!

Thanks in advance for your quick response!

~Your Environmental Club Presidents

Earth Day Plans!

2006-03-13T21:57:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone!

We have our sights set for our Earth Day plans!

We will be holding Earth Day at NNHS on Wednesday, the 12th of April before Vacation. (The real Earth Day is April 22nd, the Saturday before school starts again)

We will be having the following presentations:

Recycling and Composting - Barbara Herson and Courtney Forrester
ESP Explanation and Presentation - Mr. Snow and Students
Green Buildings - Ms. D-R and/or the architects for the school
Water Conservation - Hopefully someone from CRWA

We will also be buying t-shirts for Environmental Club members that say "Saving the World..." on the front and "One tree at a time" on the back along with a tree and 'Environmental Club.' They are probably going to cost around $10 a shirt. Please respond to let us know if you want to get a shirt!

Other Earth Day projects include:

Gathering and posting environmental facts, statistics, tips, and other information. (Posters, brochures, etc. )
Cell phone, PDA, and chargers, recycling in Newton North, and in Newtonville benefiting the school
Planning more for the Future (Movies, Collaborating with other clubs like ARWC, Green incentives, recruiting, etc.)

If you have ANY feedback, comments, suggestions, or ideas concerning any of the above, or anything else for that matter that you would like to bring up or discuss with other group members we encourage you to please post to the discussion group, and/or email us.

THANK YOU!

Welcome!

2006-02-15T00:07:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone,
This is the new blog that we just set up! We will be posting all sorts of information and important things you will want to know here so check back often! You can explore all the stuff here and we'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks!