Inglewood News AND LENNOX CITIZEN The Weekly Newspaper of Inglewood Herald Publications - Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lawndale, El Segundo, Torrance & Manhattan Beach Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 - April 23, 2015 Going Green One School at a Time Former Lakers’ star Steve Nash celebrated the with students at Oak Street Elementary School their winning of the Grades of Green Trash Free Lunch Challenge on Tuesday, April 20. The students were able to divert 13 tons of trash from landfills with the help and guidance of Grades of Green volunteers and lead Oak Street Elementary School Teacher Lena Atutoa. Photo by Cristian Vasquez. Oak Street Elementary Wins First Place in Trash Free Lunch Challenge By Cristian Vasquez count how many bags of trash are disposed In time for Earth Week, Oak Street of on a daily basis. Once that is determined, Elementary School students celebrated their the program is set into place and a record is win in the Grades of Green Trash Free Lunch kept of how many trash bags are disposed Challenge, through which the school was of at the end of the day once the program able to divert 13 tons of waste from landfills. takes effect. However, the trash bags are “You guys are lucky because you don’t now weighed after the waste is sorted, into realize what a great school you go to,” NBA recycling, compost and landfill bins. There All Star Steve Nash, who took a selfie with are even buckets available for students to the kids in the background raising their hands, drain any unwanted juice or milk containers. said to the enthusiastic crowd of children. At Oak Elementary, students are provided a “You have great teachers, parents, city council white board that reminds everyone how to and Grades of Green people who spend their dispose of their food trays and leftovers once time and energy to making sure that you get they are done eating, in order to facilitate the a great education and great opportunity to be happy and successful.” “You have great teachers, parents, city The Trash Free Lunch Challenge involved council and Grades of Green people 24 other schools, from which three elementary who spend their time and energy school finalists and three middle school finalists to making sure that you get a great were chosen. Participants, which are singed education and great opportunity to be up based on an eligibility requirement, must part of the L.A. County Sanitation Department. happy and successful.” A teacher must submit an application for the grant; there must also be a teacher to oversee the program and a maintenance crew willing to help sort the compost, recycling, and other items. “Kelso Elementary, also an Inglewood school, was involved with Grades of Green last year and I saw it [Grades of Green] in our district website so I thought that it looked like a really good program,” Oak Street Elementary School Teacher Lena Atutoa, who spearheaded the school’s efforts, said. “We had a lot of waste at our school; a lot of waste. So I thought that if someone taught us how to do it, then we could do it just as well as Kelso.” When a school applies to become a part of one of the Grades of Green program, representatives of the non-profit based in Manhattan Beach will take a tour of school, efforts behind the Trash Free Lunch Challenge. “It is really good that we have our sixth graders here because they worked with the younger children and teach them how to do it so that by the time the Kindergarteners come to sixth grade, they won’t know any other way: it will be the only way to dispose of trash,” Atutoa said. “In our application, it is what I put: it’s a new culture here.” Oak Street Elementary School not only created a student-driven environmental program that teaches students the importance of keeping waste out of our landfills, they also reduced their trash bag count from 25 bags of waste at lunchtime to less than 10 bags per day. The Trash Free Lunch Challenge schools have collectively diverted more than 100,000 bags of trash from landfills. Even more impressive, the schools have educated nearly 11,000 students on the importance of waste reduction by reducing, reusing, recycling and composting. This year’s Challenge educated even more students than the previous year. Representatives attended the communitywide celebration from the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, representatives from Mark Ridley-Thomas’ office, Inglewood City Councilman Eloy Morales Jr., Kristin Agostoni from the Inglewood Unified School District and dozens of volunteers and representatives from Grades of Green. Grades of Green, the non-profit which hosts the Trash Free Lunch Challenge, is an international nonprofit dedicated to providing parents, students and educators with free tools to educate, inspire and empower pre-K–12 students to take steps to care for the environment. Anyone wanting to implement sustainability programs can register their school online—at no cost—to get tips and measure their success on reducing trash, emissions, harmful classroom chemicals, plus dozens of other ways to help the environment. Grades of Green has been honored with many awards, including the U.S. EPA’s prestigious Environmental Award. The nonprofit is growing rapidly, with 200,000 students enrolled across 39 states and six countries. “I juts want to say how important this program is and how important it is to care for our environment and our planet. Any of you guys know that we have been in a drought here in California? It’s been about four years,” Nash told the students. “We have to be careful not to use water or waste water. What that means is that we have to take care of our planet and be very careful to take care of it so that we can enjoy all this beautiful stuff. That is exactly what you guys are doing with Grades of Green; you are learning to take care of the environment.” • Inside This Issue Certified & Licensed Professionals.......................2 Classifieds............................6 Community Briefs...............3 Food.......................................8 Hawthorne Happenings....3 Legals............................4, 6-7 Letters...................................2 Looking Up...........................6 Police Reports.....................2 Seniors..................................2 Sports....................................5 Weekend Forecast Friday Partly Cloudy 66˚/55˚ Saturday Partly Cloudy 66˚/55˚ Sunday Sunny 70˚/57
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