environment – FRIDAY BLOG

What do we do with the items that don’t go into the blue recycling or green compost bins? Do they all have to go into the gray landfill bin? At Saklan, the new answer is, “Not anymore!”

Student Council voted to use money they earned from weekly Snack Shack sales to open a school account with the recently formed Ridwell recycling company. Every two weeks, the Ridwell van retrieves plastic chip bags, Ziploc bags, candy wrappers, and even styrofoam!

After the Student Council approved of setting up a full account for our school, Middle School Student Council representative Lucas looked online to find new bins to be placed inside each classroom and near the lunch areas for disposing of waste items collected by Ridwell. These bins are now visible all over campus because they are the same as our school color: Orange!

Every week, two Middle School Student Council members will collect all of the waste from the orange Ridwell bins and consolidate it for sorting into labeled cloth bags provided by Ridwell.

Ridwell delivered their metal collection bin to be placed outside the school’s front gate for biweekly pickups. The friendly driver came by to retrieve our first full bin on March 5th!

But using Ridwell effectively also involves educating everyone here at school about what specific items can go into the Ridwell recycling bins. Student Council Publicity Co-Chairs Haley and Mae designed this poster to inform every member of the Saklan community about which specific items can go into the Ridwell recycling bin.

On Thursday, members of Student Council also visited the K-5 classrooms to give presentations on what specific items can be recycled using Ridwell.

To learn more about Ridwell, check out this article. To learn more about what can be placed in the orange bins around campus, ask a K-8th grade student!

Field trip? Field experience? These terms may feel synonymous; however, at Saklan we draw an important distinction between a field trip and a field experience. Instead of trips that may loosely connect in terms of content, a field experience takes students into the field to work directly with experts, answer key need-to-know questions, and drive our project work forward.

One example of connecting with experts in the field is the 7th grade field experience to the island of O’ahu. The driving question for this science PBL unit is, “What can we do to help reduce the single use plastics in our area?”

Prior to arriving on the island, students watched the Mockumentary: Majestic Plastic Bag and looked at photos of different animals impacted by plastic waste including sea turtles and albatrosses. They also saw direct evidence of animals ingesting plastic waste via the dissection of an albatross bolus, in which they found: a lighter, fishing lures, fishing line, bottle caps, toy parts, plastic flatware, and many small plastic fragments. They came to the realization that, if there is trash in the ocean, animals will ingest it.

Still, for students, an albatross and their food sources can feel removed from our local environment and experiences. They wondered what type of waste is in our local environment. Students went “foraging” for “food” around Saklan and found many waste and plastic items that animals could ingest. It became clear that, despite our best efforts, waste still finds its way into our local ecosystem and therefore ends up in our waterways, and ultimately oceans and ocean animals.

So how can we reduce the plastic waste that impacts our environment? The field experience to O’ahu helps students better understand the impacts of pollution on ocean life, connect with Hawaiian organizations already working to reduce waste, and learn about sustainable alternatives that already exist, as they prepare to answer the driving question by developing their own single-use plastic alternative.

Students met Rebecca, Hideki, and Lynn from Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, a local nonprofit organization that runs beach clean-ups, partners with schools, and educates the community at local events. Together they had the opportunity to mālama, care for, the ocean by completing a beach clean-up at the Mālaekahana Beach. Using a sieve-like tool, students removed 30 pounds of waste! Much of it could be classified as “micro-plastics,” or plastics that are less than 5mm in size. While students did find a large blue plastic jug on the sand, most of what they collected were super tiny bits of blue plastic, evidence of many different large blue plastic jugs that have broken down over time. Another surprise was the tiny white disks called nurdles, which are pre-production microplastics that are super tricky to recover from accidental spills into the ocean. The class was reminded that choices on land impact the oceans and that beach clean-ups can only take us so far! The staff from Sustainable Coastlines provided some great inspiration and ideas for alternatives to these plastics that are washing up on Hawaiian shores each day.

Sustainable Coastlines was just the beginning, while on O’ahu, students also connected with experts at Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve and Project Genki Ala Wai where they made and deployed Genki balls in the Ala Wai Canal to restore its ecosystem making it safer for both people and animals.

The 7th graders will take these many rich learning experiences in the field back to the classroom to help them answer their driving question and refocus on sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics in our local environment.

As always, the students aren’t the only ones gaining inspiration and connections to drive their work forward! While on the island, Linda Lathrop visited Punahou School to learn about how they approach projects and design thinking. From the integration of native Hawaiian language, music, food, and dance to design projects in their STEM labs and art rooms, it is always enriching to connect with other teachers to hear about their practices. Just like our 7th graders are out in the field grappling with the content of their project, our staff enjoyed the opportunity to discuss project hurdles and successes from another school site. Opportunities like these to connect with different schools give us new ideas and potential solutions to our own project hurdles! It is also exciting to see practices we have in common too! Can you spot any in the photos below?