If your motto around this time is ‘New Year, new you’, ESY is with you!  We are dedicating the month of January to reimagining the way we all think of waste here at Selma and beyond.  This is a part of the bigger picture of how we impact our planet and climate change and little ways we can all evoke big change.  We began by showing our students a short film Our Climate, Our Future (see the Alliance for Climate Education for more info).  We have challenged everyone to a ‘DOT’ (Do one thing) to promote change in the way we use (or not use) our resources.  Next, all classes (on all campuses!) will participate in weighing campus waste.  We will weigh it all again after our month long pursuit of reimagining waste to see how we did.  We always encourage students to refuse first when applicable, then to reduce, reuse and recycle.  This is the focus of ESY this month. What is your DOT?

In the Kitchen Classroom we will turn what would be wasted food into delicious recipes and look at how we can reuse ‘scraps’ either as food, by regrowing them in the garden or last resort, tossing them into the compost to reuse in our gardens.  We like to  remind students that even if you don’t have a garden at home you can still compost your kitchen and yard waste in the green trash bins the city provides which is used for city compost.  Maybe starting a compost at home can be your DOT?!

In Garden we will be turning items that would typically be thrown into the trash into useful items for the garden and our campus. We will also dive deeper into our recycling program here at the Selma campus. Is repurposing your DOT?