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Smoky Row Elementary - Green Team

Students from Smoky Row Elementary worked to make their school's students and faculty more aware of the negative environmental effects of using disposable water bottles and the positive effects of using and reusing refillable ones. Students provided attractive reusable bottles to every student and faculty member. By spreading the word through flyers and school announcements, they were able to encourage reusable water bottle use and make their project a huge success!

The student led Smoky Row Green Team members were very excited about promoting reusable water bottles at their school. Once the student Green Team received their bottles, they added slips of paper into each one describing the advantages of using reusable bottles vs plastic bottles.

There are many myths claiming that bottled water is either safer, healthier or cheaper than tap, but none of those claims is true. The costs that come from bottled water's damage to the environment far outweigh convenience of use.

The Green Team distributed the 820 bottles the day before their school track and field day so that students would use the reusable bottles instead of using the PTO's disposable cups. They also used survey monkey for teachers to recorded how many of their students brought in their bottles.

Why should students learn that using reusable bottle better than using disposable plastic cups or bottled water? Please watch the video above to understand how much we are polluting our planet with plastics, especially items that are used just one time and thrown away. There's literally a ton of plastic garbage for every person on earth.  Of all plastic made, only 9% is recycled, 12% is incinerated (burned,) and 79% ends up in landfills or out polluting our environment. We can do better.

The 820 water bottles that were purchased came to good use and students began using them daily at school. There was high demand at the water bottle refilling station on school track and field day, and the students felt their project had a long lasting effect on the Smoky Row student and faculty community.