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Green Team aims at spreading the environmental throughout the community

A new Green Team was recently formed in the local area and oddly enough, it doesn’t have anything to do with a certain Canadian Football League team which shall remain nameless. While the difference in the two may be vast, they both have one thing in common – tackling.
21715rimbeyGreen-Team
Pictured above is the Rimbey Elementary School’s Green Team

Review staff:

A new Green Team was recently formed in the local area and oddly enough, it doesn’t have anything to do with a certain Canadian Football League team which shall remain nameless.

While the difference in the two may be vast, they both have one thing in common – tackling.

But instead of tackling quarterbacks, the local Green Team, which comprises Grade 4 to 6 students from the Rimbey Elementary School, plans of tackling a much bigger problem, that being doing their part to clean up the environment.

“Rimbey Elementary is actually a very environmentally-conscious school and we have been for a while. But in order to bump it up a level, we wanted to make the kids as aware as possible,” said Grade 4 teacher Mary Palm who coordinates the group. “Last year we were given an environmental grant from ConocoPhillips which helped us buy compost buckets for every classroom and the staff room in the school. So we’re trying to educate all of the kids now about why we should compost.”

From there, the kids collect the compost material and transfer it to a much bigger bin located outside of the school to a locked compound due to the fact that the last one was vandalized.

“We have a school philosophy that is: We Believe in a Better World, so it fits right in with our Green Team Club philosophy,” Palm said. “So those kids and we teachers are trying to come up with projects to make the students and the staff in this school can make the world a better place including our environment, and we want to extend that into the community.”

To that end, the teachers would like to see the students bring the message of composting home to their parents and encourage them to do the same. The school also plans on including tips and suggestions in their newsletter as an additional way of extolling the environmental benefits of composting.

But the group has a number of additional plans as well including the recycling of used milk jugs as well as recycling paper, something the school – any school, goes through plenty of.

They also plan on approaching two other groups in particular to spread the environmental word including the students at the Jr./Sr. High School and the excessive amount of litter that ends up on the ground – most of which comes from the bigger students who walk to the downtown area over the lunch hour to purchase food and drink items.

Even more pressing however, is the practice of parents in the parking lots around the school sitting for rather lengthy periods of time waiting for their kids while their vehicles remain idling.

“It’s a huge problem outside of our school especially with our climate when it’s cold and parents get here 20 or 30 minutes before their kids get out of school and everyone is sitting there idling,” Palm said. “It’s even an issue with the school busses. I realize if you’re driving a diesel vehicle in the cold weather it can be a bit of a problem, but we need to look at ways of improving that. It’s amazing how big a difference can be made if each person does just a little.”

Palm cited the country of Sweden which recently implemented very stiff fines for any vehicle caught idling for more than one minute without moving.

For the Green Team however, the good ideas certainly don’t stop there.

“We’re trying to come up with a list of ideas, but there’s lots more, many more. It’s almost unending, but we’re kind of excited about all the possibilities,” Palm said. “I know there are a lot of adults in the community who aren’t even aware of what can be recycled in Rimbey. Or if it can’t be recycled in Rimbey, than maybe it can be recycled in Red Deer or elsewhere. So we’d like to pass on some of that information and I’d like to see it coming from the kids.”

In that effort, readers of the Rimbey Review may see the occasional story or column written by one of the students in the weeks and months ahead in an effort to raise awareness of environmental concerns (see below).

“We can do it within the school, but we want to stretch it into the community and I thought it would be very interesting for the kids to feel like they’re making a difference as kids, to the grown-up community,” Palm said. “As they’re learning about composting, if they could write a little article about why it is important and how easy it is, maybe it would inspire a few people in the community to give it a try.”

Are You Sure You Are Composting?

By Kristin N. Grade 5

You can build a compost,

It’s not really that hard,

And when you’re finished,

You can put it in your backyard!

It is great for the environment,

It is also great for you,

Put in all your scraps of fruits and vegetables,

And please don’t put in a smelly shoe.

Next time you go to your compost,

Please make sure you stir it,

It shouldn’t be a smelly job,

Our environment deserves it!

You can help us keep our environment safe,

From being destroyed by people,

Littering is not a good idea,

It also should be illegal.