Last year we had a group of extraordinary kids in our Recycle Kid's Club.  These students were elected by their peers.  Each student supported one classroom in our building, making sure that the proper recyclables were placed in the tub and not in the trash.  Twice a week they emptied the recycle tubs from the classroom and put the contents in the white recycle dumpster.  The project management students, Kai and Nico, assisted in the cafeteria and in the kitchen, making sure that plastic milk jugs, cardboard boxes, large tin cans and large plastic containers were recycled daily.  On average, 170 milk jugs are recycled each day! Stop by the bulletin board across from the technology lab to see a list and examples of all the items we recycle at Boston.  It's exciting to know that our students care about the earth and the quality of the world in which they are growing up in.  A special thanks to Kai, John, Edith, Gisselle, Esmeralda, Joel, Raul, Madeline, Kyle, Nico, Cora, Asia, Manuel and Jasiel for being our first ever Recycle Kid's Club team! Stay posted for the names of this year's recycle kids!  We also have a special project plan with www.kiva.org.  We will be asking all students and their families to save their pop cans.  The money raised from the recycling of the cans will be used to sponsor a small loan to someone in need.  Please contact Mrs. Duran if you are interested in helping with this special project. 

Did you know?

*At least 38.9% of the U.S. waste stream is paper. *Americans throw away 44 million newspapers everyday. That’s the same as dumping 500,000 trees into landfills each week. *If every household reused a paper grocery bag for one shopping trip, about 60,000 trees would be saved. *We save 17 trees for each ton of recycled newspaper. *Americans throw out about 85% of the office paper we use. *Every ton of recycled office paper saves 380 gallons of oil. *We save enough energy by recycling one aluminum can to run a TV set for three hours. *Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch. That means you can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make one can out of new material. Energy savings in 1993 alone were enough to light a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years. . *Americans throw away enough aluminum every month to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet. *Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74% of the energy used to produce them. *More than 50% of a new aluminum can is made from recycled aluminum. *The 36 billion aluminum cans landfilled last year had a scrap value of more than $600 million. (Some day we'll be mining our landfills for the resources we've buried.) *Glass never wears out -- it can be recycled forever. We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled -- 1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar. *If all the glass bottles and jars collected through recycling in the U.S. in 94 were laid end to end, they'd reach the moon and half way back to earth. *Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap Texas. *Americans go through 2.5 million plastic bottles every year. *26 recycled PET bottles equals a polyester suit. 5 recycled PET bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket. *If every American household recycled just one out of every ten HDPE bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year. *Each year American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam cups, enough every year to circle the earth 436 times. *If only 100,000 people stopped their junk, mail, we could save up to 150,000 trees annually. If a million people did this, we could save up to a million and a half trees. *The junk mail Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat 250,000 homes. *The average American still spends 8 full months of his/her life opening junk mail. *In 1865, an estimated 10,000 hogs roamed New York City, eating garbage. Now, one of every six U.S. trucks is a garbage truck. * In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his/her adult weight in garbage. If you add it up, this means that a 150-lb. adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs of trash for his/her children. *The average baby generates a ton of garbage every year. *The landfill gas produced daily at Fresh Kills Landfill is enough fuel to heat 50,000 homes.*$1 out of every $11 Americans spend for food goes for packaging. *Americans dump the equivalent of more than 21 million shopping bags full of food into landfills every year.*Every day America cuts down two million trees-but throws away about 42 million newspapers. That means the equivalent of about 500,000 trees is dumped into landfills every week. *If everyone who subscribes to the New York Times recycled, we’d keep over 6,000 tons of pollution out of the air. *It takes an entire forest--over 500,000 trees to supply Americans with their Sunday newspapers every week.