Schools

Green Scene: Ojibwa Elementary Schools Macomb in 'Green' Living

Before it achieved "Evergreen" status as a Michigan Green School, Ojibwa Elementary has been leading the way in "green" education.

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Green Dream: Long before earning its "Evergreen" status, the highest level of status available, Ojibwa Elementary has been leading the way in "green" practices. With its Eco-Team organizing the school's efforts, Ojibwa has been recycling paper, cardboard, plastic water bottles, batteries, cell phones, ink cartridges and Styrofoam lunch trays since the beginning of the school year.

The Eco-Team, headed by fifth-grade teacher Mary Jo Strizic, has also created reusable water bottles that are sold at Ojibwa events throughout the year and used in place of environmentally harmful plastic bottles. By no longer selling single-use water bottles, Ojibwa has been able to reduce this waste by 100 percent.

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Christina Russo's third-grade class maintains a bird habitat in the Ojibwa Courtyard and the school as a whole has symbolically adopted endangered wildlife through the World Wildlife Fund.

The Ojibwa PTO, which assists the Eco-Team in its efforts, has also gone paperless this year, sending all its correspondence electronically and even returning its copy machine to the district.

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Why go green? “For me, I’ve been living a pretty green life long before it was cool,” said Julie Koos, Ojibwa PTO president. “When I started having kids, I knew that if they learned in their youth to live green, it would change their view of garbage. Garbage is a finite thing. We can’t store it forever. It takes thousands of years for a plastic bottle to decompose–now it’s second nature to kids to recycle and that's changing the world.”


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