Green living at Hamilton School is as easy as Recycle, Reduce, Reuse!  Here’s what the 3-R’s and 2 BIG G’s look like at Hamilton:

Recycle

We recycle the following items at our school:

• paper
• cardboard
• milk cartons
• batteries
• cell phones
• toner cartridges
• IPODS/MP3 Players
• Laptop Computers

Hamilton Elementary works each day to be a green school.  We continue to exceed our recycling targets. See our results here.

Reduce

Hamilton School is making steps to become a zero-waste school.  Some of our more recent efforts include:

Elmo’s, projectors, and SmartBoards are found in each grade level reducing the amount of paper teachers are using to teach lessons.

Lights out Hamilton.  Teachers and students are encouraged to turn lights out when they leave a room.  Last spring our Girls on the Run runners made signs for all of the light switches in the building.

Air dryers are in the largest bathrooms in our school reducing our dependence on paper towels. We are writing a grant to get air hand dryers in all of our bathrooms next year!

Preschool classrooms serve family style meals with reusable serving ware, plates, and dishes.  Presently our amazing kitchen staff washes these dishes by hand, but we are looking into options to put a dishwasher in our school so all students will be served lunches on washable dishes. 

Reuse

Everyday our school lunch waste is composted.  Our fourth and fifth grade students are responsible for chopping up lunch waste and placing it in the composting bins daily. The beautiful dirt the earth’s creatures creates from our uneaten food will be used in our school gardening efforts.  Nothing better than “reusing” food! 

Children are encouraged to bring reusable water bottles and lunchboxes for their lunches. 

Teachers are encouraged to copy on both sides of papers and paper used on one side is given to the preschool room for the blank side to be used as scratch paper.

Recyclable materials were given a second-life at Hamilton School through our visual arts program including making machines for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, mask making, and monster creation

Other in progress reduction and reuse methods include:

-          Investigating the use of reusable bags for the universal breakfast program

-          Providing families access to resources to send their children with zero-waste lunches to school (reusable water bottles, bags, and laptop lunchboxes)

-          Starting the 2011-2012 school year families will be receiving an “e-backpack” where all notes will be available online, drastically reducing the amount of paper we are sending home.  Teachers weekly newsletters and the principals letter will also be found online.

Gardening

Hamilton School was the first school in Chicago to be awarded a Wooly Garden (woolyschoolgarden.com).  Look for our garden in May.

Many classrooms adopt plants to care for throughout the year.  Currently we have: flowers, ferns, herbs, and trees growing in one class or another at Hamilton School!

We are currently raising funds for a large community garden/green space for the west side of our building.  Please visit: http://www.hamiltoncps.org/school-information/the-greening-of-hamilton for more information on how you can contribute to our campaign!

Green Team

Hamilton School’s Green Team is a cooperative group made up of teachers, students, families, and community members who are interested in supporting our green efforts.  The green team helps with composting, recycling, and promoting our green projects.  Currently the teachers, parents and community members on the green team are writing a Zero-Waste Grant to help aide in waste reduction at Hamilton. The green team will be assisting in the planting of our Wooly Garden in May and in the implementation of Earth Week.  E-mail Nichole Moos if you are interested in joining us: nmoos@cps.edu.