Flickr slideshow!

If you can put your pictures on Flickr, and add them to the Earth Day Groceries Project Group, they'll appear in this slideshow:

Award Certificate Ready

The award certificate for 2009 is now ready - so sorry for the delay. It's also available as a pdf file: http://www.earthdaybags.org/awards/

Facebook Group, Wiki launched!

Yes, that's right! If you are on Facebook, please consider joining the brand new Facebook Group for the Earthday Groceries Project! Add pictures, videos, join in on and start your own discussions, etc, etc.

There is also a brand new wiki, at earthdaybags.wikispaces.com, where you can do much the same thing, and add contact info - you don't have to be a member there.

If you have more ideas on how to expand/update the project, please leave a comment here. Thanks! - Mark

Earth Day 2009 - changes ahead...

Reports are starting to come in for the effort in 2009! There are some changes to the web site that visitors and participants should be aware of:

• Reports submitted for the 2009 effort will be combined with 2008 reports. I'll have all the report pages renamed to read "2008-09" by the end of the week, hopefully.
• Pictures will not be put up on the project web site any more. Participants are encouraged to upload their pictures to their school/organization web site - or a photo sharing site like Flickr, and then email in a link to those pictures. Those links will then be added to the pictures page.

I know this may be a disappointment to some, but these decisions were based on time and money - the lack of both. My apologies - Mark

Pictures - it's over

Wow! An amazing 197 schools sent in pictures of their efforts on the Earth Day Groceries Project in 2008. And 35 0f them were from Romania - go figure... If anybody knows what happened in Romania to cause this big spike, please let me know.

Anyway, all pictures sent in have been placed on new web pages. We'll probably top 200 school submissions by the end of May, a record by a long shot.

Unfortunately, The Earth Day Groceries Project will not be able to host pictures for schools from now on. We will certainly add links to other web pages and collections with pictures, but...

The issue is time. It takes an average of 10 minutes to convert and archive an email with picture attachments into a web page for a school. For 200 web pages, that's a lot of minutes - and way too many hours to add to my teaching life, even if I got paid for it :) Many thanks to all the teachers and group leaders who have sent in their pictures over the years - they are incredible! They will always remain on the website as testimony to the comittment of millions of schoolchildren to saving our Earth.


I'll close this chapter in the project by sharing the very first picture from another school ever sent in to the web site. From 1996, Royston Elementary in Royston, BC, Canada - thanks, Kelsey!


tags: earthday earthdaybags

What it means

Ever wonder what people think when they get home and start taking their groceries out of an Earth Day grocery bag? Here's a report just in from Kristina Villena at Sunset Hills Elementary in San Diego, California:

The day after Earth Day, we got a letter from a member of the community who had received one of our bags.

"My husband came home from Stater Brothers that day with his groceries in some of the most beautiful bags I've ever seen. Each grocery bag was a one of a kind masterpiece, evidently created with incredible love for our planet and others. I only know the names of a few of the artists but I wanted them to know how their gifts to our family (and the Earth!) impacted us. I was overwhelmed with such happiness when I first saw them that I nearly cried in joy!"

Thanks for such a great project!

Reports and PIctures - update 4/23/08

It's the day after Earth Day, and the response to this project this year is fantastic! Reports are coming in steadily, in extremely high numbers. Pictures, on the other hand, are coming in in record numbers!

Here's when to expect pictures and reports to appear on the web site:

• Reports will appear on the site withing 24 hours.
• Pictures currently have a 4 or 5 day delay. I'm sorry for this, but right now there are pictures from 75 schools waiting to be put up on the site. Given that it takes about 10 minutes to create each page for a school, well, the math says it'll happen on the weekend.

So, project participants, my apologies for the delay - but thanks for taking the time to fill out a report and send in those pictures! Keep them coming! - Mark