Back To School the green way!

It’s that time of the year again - a brand new start of the school year for students and their parents!­ Take this opportunity to introduce some new practices into your daily life that can be more environmentally friendly. You may even be able to save costs by switching to more effective and green alternatives for the start of the new school year!

Green Transportation

Reducing your carbon footprint and making healthy choices

To really make a difference and reduce your impact on the environment, beginning this fall, do your best to reduce the amount you drive your kids to and from school. One popular way is to enroll your children into a bus program. School buses reduce a great amount of emissions, especially if it’s a newer bus that is up to date with the current emission-reducing standards. There’s also the possibility of carpool – either one of your neighbours can start carpooling kids from your neighbourhood or you can start your own carpool. 

If your school does not offer a bus program, or if you just live nearby, get your children to ride their bike or walk to school! A co-op walk team can help keep your kids safe by having groups walk together and alternating parent escorts if needed. 

Eco Supplies

Taking inventory and reusing what you can

Before deciding to go out and buy brand new school supplies for your children, take some time to look at what you’re currently have and see if anything can be reused. Why buy new pens and pencils when the old ones are still usable?  No need to buy a new notebook just because a few pages have been used in one from last year, or buying a new pencil case because the old one is out of style. Making smart, economical decisions can go a long way in saving your money and reducing production and waste emissions that comes from purchasing new supplies.

If your children get hungry or thirsty, its better that they reach for a reusable water bottle and plastic container instead of a disposable plastic water bottle and plastic ziplock bag. Either plastic or aluminum, reusable water bottles make for a much better alternative. Visit Good Housekeeping to read the list of some of the best water bottles around. Also, make sure that any water bottle purchased for reuse is BPA-free (Bisphenol A). There are also alternatives to plastic containers, such as SnackTAXI, who offer reusable food sacks. One “snack-sack” can reduce the use of about 1000 plastic bags over its lifetime.

Buying new eco-friendly school supplies

When you have looked over what you have and you’ve decided that you still need some more school supplies, try to lean towards the greener alternative. Many major retailers are carrying recycled and renewable school supplies such as recycled notebooks, paper and binders, and biodegradable pencils. Paper Mate is offering biodegradable pencils that are offered at many major retailers, such as Staples. There is also Ecojot, who offer notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, and more made entirely from post-consumer waste. When looking for a new backpack, look for an environmentally as well as child friendly backpack, one that’s made from recycled material and is padded to prevent back pain. You can check out The Ultimate Green Store or Ecocentric Bags for an idea on some cool backpacks being offered.

Most of the money spent on supplies will be towards new clothes that children are always in need of. If your kids don’t mind, wearing hand-me-down clothing from friends and family or thrift stores can be one of the ways to save money and reduce your emissions. If your children are style-conscious, there are many popular brands like Adidas, Levi’s and H&M that offer clothes made from more eco-friendly material.

The most important thing to consider is that your children must understand and be educated on the importance of the environment and that even the little things can go a long way in sustaining our planet.

Little Steps

Go with what you know

Going green doesnt always have to mean big changes, sticking to some basic principals can make a big difference in little ways! REDUCE, REUSE, & RECYCLE every way you can. 

For more suggestions on going green with kids visit some of our other articles:

Easy ways to get your kids thinking about the environment early

28 Ways To Build A Green Lifestyle

Green Resources: Digital Textbooks

Or check out the following links for more resources:

Meadford Independent, “Green Tips for Back to School”

Tree Hugger, “How to Go Green: Back to School”
Huffington Post, “Green your Back-to-School Routine”

SnackTAXI

Ecouterre, “Levi’s, H&M, Adidas Debut Apparel Made With Eco-Friendly “Better Cotton””

Paper Mate, “Biodegrable Products”

Good Housekeeping, “Reusable water bottle reviews”

The Ultimate Green Store

Ecocentric Bags

Ecojot

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Back to Basics Direct Hydropower

The Oil Drum has a post by Kris de Decker, founder and writer at Low-tech Magazine, on "direct use" of micro hydro power - Back to Basics: Direct Hydropower.

All hydropower plants today produce electricity. Transforming energy to electricity seems to be the only way to harness water power, but it is not. For almost two thousand years, water wheels powered machines directly via mechanical transmission.

Some small direct hydro powered systems in South America present a strong case for combining the use of modern materials with old fashioned methods of water power mechanization. The higher efficiency of this approach means that less water is needed to produce a given amount of energy. This lowers the cost of hydropower and enables power to be produced by the use of very small streams. ...

In spite of these significant improvements, hydropower installations today are actually less efficient than those from earlier centuries. The culprit is electricity. Not long after the introduction of the water turbine, another change occured: Instead of using water-powered prime movers to run machinery directly (as had been the case for centuries), water turbines were (and still are) used to generate electricity. This modern approach has introduced an energy deficit that has nullified any progress behind hydropower design efficiency.

In a modern hydropower installation, a water turbine converts the energy in the moving water into rotational energy at its shaft, which is then converted into electrical energy by the generator that is coupled to the turbine. Next, the electrical energy is converted back into rotational energy by the electric motor of the machine that is being powered. Every energy conversion introduces energy loss. This loss of energy occurs due to friction, which is observable as heat, vibration and noise. Friction occurs at all levels of electrical transmission: In the turbine, the generator, and the motor. Additional components such as batteries, drive systems and inverters can further increase efficiency losses. ...

This means that a small, modern hydropower plant has a similar efficiency rating to a centuries old configuration using a wooden vertical overshot water wheel (50-60%), and that this modern counterpart is considerably less efficient than the iron water wheels of the 18th century (65-85%). In an old fashioned hydropower installation, there was only one conversion of energy; A water wheel converted the energy inherent to the water source into rotational energy at its shaft. The same shaft also moved the machinery, so that the only source of significant energy loss occured in the water wheel itself.

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A Look Back at the Space Shuttle

The New York Times has a look back at the now gone era of the space shuttle, with one segment looking at Bucky Fullers long awaited image of the earth from space - A Look Back at the Space Shuttle.

DP: What do you feel as you see the shuttle program winding down?

WG: I feel a little sadness, a little bit, because I know what we can continue to keep doing with this shuttle. It would be nice if that other program was coming along a little bit faster, and we could kind of roll right from this program to the next one.

But I think we can still use that same work force to re-tool, build solid plans and then kind of get ready to go move forward.

The Apollo astronauts said that, basically by going to the moon, we learned more about the earth than we did by staying here. And those first images from the surface of the moon, of the earthrise, seeing the earth as a sphere, with this thin atmosphere, really pushes how fragile our world is, and how small our world is.

By continuing to push the technology envelope, we really learn a lot more about what’s really happening here on the earth.

DP: The space shuttle that we use to get to the space station is now retired. So how are we gonna get back and forth now?

WG: We’re gonna use the Soyuz spacecraft, which we’ve been actually using for crew rotations for about the last two years. We’ve focused the shuttle on doing the assembly activities.

DP: We rent space on the Russian aircraft?

WG: Yep. Our crews are trained in Russia to operate and help them fly the spacecraft.

DP: And doesn’t that bother anyone? I mean, doesn’t that make us sort of second-class space citizens?

WG: I don’t really look at it that way. Because if you look at the space station, it’s really an international facility. So there are Russian modules. There’s also a Japanese module. The European space agency has another module. And the U.S. has a large research facility. We provide power to the Russian side—our solar rays generate power, and provide it to the Russian side. And they do propulsion for us on the space station.

So when you ask me about transportation, it’s not different than all these other dependencies I have already. We are truly an international team. It’s not competition like it was before, where we’re gonna beat the Russians, or we’re gonna beat the Chinese.

There’s a control center in Moscow, a control center in Houston, a control center in Japan, and also in Europe. And we all work together to keep this space station flying, and operating.

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