By Kelly Rondeau

It’s back to the books for kids across America and going green in the classroom has never been so easy. With the help of a popular program called the Go Green Initiative, teachers have quick and simple access online to all the tools and resources needed to green a classroom, an entire school, or even a school-district.

Serving as the charter and flagship school for the Go Green Initiative, Walnut Grove Elementary School, in Pleasanton, Calif., first found out about the program in 2002 when Jill Buck, a mother of three, and PTA president, got creative and began asking “What else could we do to go green?”

“The school was doing some gardening, composting and recycling, but I wanted to do more, so I sat down at my kitchen table and started writing up the initiative,” said Ms. Buck (pictured left). “That was in 2002, and since then the program has just grown and grown: we’re now operating in all 50 states in the US, we’re in 13 countries, and on 4 continents; our website gets over 2 million hits a month; it’s an amazing program. Schools are finding us on the Internet and simply by word of mouth.”

Walnut Grove’s principal, Bill Radulovich, comments, “It all started here on my campus, as Jill (Buck) was my PTA president. As the charter school for this program, she first starting designing ideas to partner with waste management to help us with recycling waste, and that grew into networking and working with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funds that are distributed to different programs.

“Where once we had cardboard boxes to hold are recycling items, we now have huge 55-gallon gobblers, these huge barrels with slots that are really cool. She helped us gain more methods in the form of recycling and reusing and how to be more efficient overall.”

[Read more →]

By Catherine Girardeau

Eleven-year-old Colin Carlson of Coventry, Conn., took his cue from the penguins. The recent winner of the sixth annual Action for Nature International Young Eco-Hero Awards in the 8-to-13 age group was nine when he visited the Galapagos Islands as a member of the National Geographic Kids Expedition Team.

“I was snorkeling near a beach that was supposed to be teeming with Galapagos penguins, and there were only two or three,” Colin said in an interview with GreenRightNow. When Colin asked why, the answer he got – repeated El Nino ocean warming cycles associated with global climate change – prompted him to launch
“The Cool Coventry Club” to educate people about global warming and energy conservation, starting in his hometown.

San Francisco, California-based non-profit Action for Nature’s president, Beryl Kay, said her organization started the International Young Eco-Hero Awards after publishing a book about children’s successful environmental efforts around the world. “We thought it would be worthwhile to keep in touch with children who are doing exciting environmental things,” Kay said.

[Read more →]

By Kelly Rondeau

You’ve heard of No Child Left Behind. Now comes a new program with serious educational goals, but a different approach: No Child Left Inside proposes to re-invigorate environmental education by tapping into kids’ innate curiosity about nature. And communities across America are embracing the fresh, bottom-up concept by holding No Child Left Inside events.

[Read more →]

By Michele Chan Santos

On a quiet street in the tree-covered city of Rollingwood, a suburb of Austin, Texas, sits a house designed to epitomize everything technology and modern design can do to make a home environmentally friendly and safe for families with children.

[Read more →]

Photo: National Wildlife Federation | Charlie Archambault
By Kelly Rondeau
Celebrating Earth Day (April 22) and National Wildlife Week (April 19-27) reminds families across America that getting unplugged from technology, and plugging into nature, is a great way to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the environment. And what better way to do this than to have [...]

[Read more →]

By Harriet Blake
Interest in the No Child Left Inside Act is growing on Capitol Hill this week. The proposed $100 million a year initiative would provide new funding for environmental education, specifically outdoor learning activities in schools and other learning centers. Environmentalists, teachers, some representatives of Congress and business leaders are supporting the plan [...]

[Read more →]

By Bill Marvel
Census takers trek door to door to count people. Bird watchers take to parks and woods for their annual bird count. Volunteers patrol the waters off California and Hawaii looking for whales. But you don’t have to go any farther than your own back yard to participate in this year’s GLOBE at [...]

[Read more →]

Looking for a way to help your children understand global warming, without scaring them to pieces? Consider getting them the new Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming by Laurie David (producer of An Inconvenient Truth) and Cambria Gordon. It’s informative, witty without being flip and serious without being sinister.
This is just the thing to help [...]

[Read more →]

Add a green note to your Halloween this year with jack-o-lanterns featuring ferocious felines and grimacing gorillas courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund, which has posted some inspired and free carving templates and instructions.
You can find the templates for several endangered or threatened species - the tiger, gorilla, polar bear, pandas, sea turtles and [...]

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler
Worms. These lower invertebrates have gotten such a bad rap. No one really gives them a thought, except that organic gardeners know they’ve got good soil when they see plenty of worms at work aerating and fertilizing it.
For the uninitiated, worms can be your best friend when it comes to reducing household [...]

[Read more →]

By Barbara Kessler
Looking for inspiration among the raft of discouraging reports about our environment?
Then get ready to lift your spirits by moving into action on Earth Day, which is fast upon us on April 22, and which has actually morphed into Environmental Education Week, April 15 to 22.
EE Week is brainchild of the National [...]

[Read more →]