Mason-Rice Green Team Kids!

This week, Mason-Rice students started composting food waste in the lunchroom!   Twice a week food scraps will be picked up by Black Earth Compost and processed into nutrient-rich compost. Why?  Composting... Saves time and money in reduced soil and fertilizer purchases while decreasing local disposal costs. By composting, you won't have to bag and drag yard waste to the curb for collection! Is good for the environment. Often, organic material decomposes without air in landfills producing methane, a gas that contributes to global climate change. Enriches the soil. Compost reduces erosion by improving soil structure and adds essential nutrients to the soil, helping to grow trouble-free plants with less water, fertilizer or pesticides. What can your family do to support your earth-friendly kid?  Here are 3 easy steps to make a difference: 1. COMPOST AT HOME Your family can reduce food scraps going into the trash by signing up for curbside food ...

With the support of Principal Bultema and our head custodian Leo, and Newton's fantastic Sustainable Materials Management Director (Waneta Trabert) and Waste Diversion Coordinator (Erica Braman), we will be able to have Mason-Rice lunchroom food waste composted! To help train Mason-Rice students on composting in the lunchroom, the Green Team Kids received an exciting assignment: to create a compost training video to be shown in classrooms during the composting roll-out in late February.  Eleven Green Team students came together for two long evenings in February with our superstar videographer and Mason-Rice parent Neal McConnell to film the video.  (Thank you, Neal!!!) The final video is complete and will be shared on this blog at a later date! ============================== 2/28 UPDATE: During the last week of February, the Mason-Rice Green Team Kids composting video was shown in all K-5 classrooms to complement the lunchtime composting training they received from...

The Mason-Rice PTO and Green Team supports the use of reusable shopping bags and sold some on a beautiful afternoon this past week.  Mason-Rice was chosen as this month's recipient of donations from the Needham Street Stop & Shop Community Bag sales, which is part of an effort to reduce waste and help sustain our environment. (Thanks goes to to PTO member Yasmeen for helping to organize this event!) Also, huge thanks to all who purchased bags this past Monday, 2/24!

SIGN-UP!  MASON - RICE  GREEN TEAM KIDS - NEXT SESSION ON THURSDAY, 2/27@3PM Mason - Rice  Green Team Kids will be holding its next drop-in session on Thursday, February 27.  Please RSVP here .  This session is open to students in Grades 3-5 (unaccompanied) and students in K-2 with a caregiver.  For any questions, e-mail Heather Friedman, Wendy Sheu, and Barbara Nestle at  masonrice .greenteam@gmail.com .  

Thanks to twenty incredibly energetic and engaged Mason-Rice students (ranging from 1st to 5th grade), we successfully launched this year's Mason-Rice Green Team Kids this past Friday afternoon!  Given the unusually warm January we've experienced and the urgency of our climate crisis, it seemed appropriate to (re-)introduce the topic of climate change at our session and empower our students to help raise awareness of the issue within our community (while enjoying an outdoor walk on a warm Friday afternoon in January). After spending some time in the classroom discussing climate change and the story of Greta Thunberg, the students had a chance to hear from Kate, a Newton South high school student -- one of our "own" youth here in Newton -- who cares deeply about our environment and is taking action to help address climate change.   Once we wrapped up the classroom portion, we headed off (20 kids and 6 grown-ups!) to Newton Centre. If they chose to do so, studen...