British Columbia Earth Day Groceries Reports - 1999

Brenda Hawley
Southridge Elementary School
Prince George, British Columbia, Canada
Bags decorated: 280 bags
Comments: Great response again...Our Kindergarten to Grade 7 school decorated grocery bags in the Earth Day theme and our local Overwaitea packed groceries in them. I can hardly wait to hear how many bags were decorated in all!
Helene Goulet
Ecole des Deux Mondes Elementary School
Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada
Bags decorated: 136
Comments: This was our first adventure decorating grocery bags for a local store. Each student in the school did participate. We hope to include other activities as well next year.
Merci!
Mrs. Lori Austin
Forest Grove Elementary School
Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Bags decorated: 390
Comments: Forest Grove Elementary School participated in the Earth Day bag project for the first time this year. Students from Kindergarten to Gr. 7 decorated 390 bags for the IGA store in their neighbourhood. Student council members played an important role in presenting the project to each class, counting out the bags and collecting them when completed. The school's project was covered by two local newspapers, the Burnaby Now and the News Leader. This created a lot of excitement, particularly for the Gr. 2/3 class that got their picture in the paper. The IGA reported a very favourable response from customers throughout the week that the bags were handed out. Overall, the project proved to be a very positive, empowering experience for both students and teachers. WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!
Randerson Ridge Elementary School in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada participated in the Groceries Project for the first time. 243 wonderfully decorated bags were returned to one of our local grocery stores.
Diane McGonigle
Ted Waring
Lakewood Elementary
Victoria, BC, Canada
Bags decorated: 500
Comments: All of the students from Lakewood Elementary in took part once again in an awesome week long celebration of Earth Day ! Activities ranged from releasing salmon fry to planting gardens. But the highlight and whole school focus for the week was to decorate our grocery bags. The 500 bags were dontated by our local Thrifty Foods ( Colwood) store. Our slogans/messages were wide and varied - This is the only habitable Planet...why waste it !, Blue Boxes work ( our recycle program ), Save our one Earth, We are the People of the Earth, Keep it Green !, and many more exciting phrases.
We have also enclosed a number of photos of the bags we have designed for our local food store. Last year a number of our local residents wrote letters to our school expressing how wonderful they thought the bags were designed!
Hello, our grocery bag decorating was successful. The students at Central Elementary School in Trail, B.C. completed 155 bags and returned them to Ferraro Foods. Thank-you for your time,
from the Central School Students
Aaron Mckenzie

British Columbia Earth Day Groceries Reports - 1998

The children at Emily Carr Elementary School in Vancouver, B.C. Canada became partners with Safeway, at Oak and King Edward to celebrate Earth Day. The students decorated 305 grocery bags, which were given out on Earth Day.
On April 23, we received several calls at the school, thanking the children for the beautiful bags and the reminder to take care of our Earth. Students and teachers appreciated the opportunity to participate in Earth Day in this exciting way. One of our Grade 7 students has volunteered to organize a web page. Thanks again and hope to participate again, next year.
Judy Charles (judyandpolly@bc.sympatico.ca)
Emily Carr Elementary (Vancouver, B.C.)
Richmond, B.C., Canada
Once again our school, Salt Spring Elementary decorated grocery bags and returned them to the two local grocery stores for distribution.The kids had fun decorating the bags with earth friendly slogans and pictures. We returned 228 bags to the stores-great number since we are a little k to 5 school.
Thank you for organizing this project. Please let our school know how many bags were decorated.
Hope you've had a great earth week.
Maria Dammel madammel@saltspring.com
British Columbia, Canada
We decorated 321 grocery bags and Overwaitea, our local grocery store, enjoyed packing the communities' groceries.
Brenda Hawley (southridge93@hotmail.com)
Southridge Elementary School
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/1501
Prince George, BC, Canada
A very popular choice of activity for whole-school participation. Local community loved it too! We decorated 170 bags (from Kindergarten to Grade 7) Thanks for the idea. We will certainly do it again next year.
Chris Ward
Glenlyon-Norfolk School
Victoria, B.C. Canada
We participated in your Earth Day project and just loved the results. 300 bags from Woodlands Secondary School and another 100 from NDSS were delivered to Thrifty Foods here in Nanaimo, B.C. CAN.
We did the majority of ours in French and they looked just great! What a worthwhile project!!!!! Keep up the effort. Keep up the great work!!!! This is an important message we are sending.
Valerie Hansen vhansen@edu.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca
http://www.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca/schools/wdls/
WSS
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in such a great project! All the students, from K-5 at Collingwood Preparatory School proudly decorated a total of 488 bags for Earth Day. We will be returning our decorated bags Tuesday April, 21 for distribution on April 22. The project was run by our school's H.O.P.E. (Help Our Precious Earth) Club and they did an excellent job promoting this important day. A Special Thanks to the Caulfield Safeway for helping our students share their concerns for the earth with our community. Happy Earth Day, everyone!
Nicole Mader (madern@cwnv1.collingwood.org)
Collingwood Preparatory School
http://cwnv1.collingwood.org/
West Vancouver, B.C. Canada
What a great project! I was very pleased when this idea was passed onto me, and in turn, I have passed it on to a number of other schools. Rock City Elementary is a K-7 school of approximately 400 students. We are located in Nanaimo, a city on Vancouver Island, off the west coast of British Columbia. We completed 456 grocery bags, most as part of a cross-grade activity, the others as time permitted in the intermediate classrooms. Our local grocery store, Overwaitea, was delighted with the efforts of the students, and we are looking forward to hearing comments from the customers on Earth Day. Thanks again for a wonderful project, and one which makes great use of the Internet for spreading the message. Happy Earth Day, everyone.
Phil Murphy (pmurphy@nisa.net)
Rock City Elementary
http://www.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca
Nanaimo, B.C., Canada
Thought you would like to know that Fairview Community School made Earthday Grocery bags for our local Coop. We were on CHEK TV so it was good advertising for Earthday. My buddy class is kindergarten and our 6/7 class helped them. The kids had fun and thought about our earth. Thanks for the idea.
Jeremy Sumner jsumner@edu.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca
Wow ! Our entire school ( kids from age 5 to 13 )took a great deal of interest in the project this year. We decorated over 500 grocery bags with many colourful,decorative designs and catchy slogans.
A local environmental magazine also picked up the story of the Grocery Bag project and published it for Earth Week ! It seems that kids of all ages really do care about what happens to their home !
The bags were presented to Thrifty Foods ( the Colwood Store ) and they were delighted to take part with our school for a second year in a row.
Although still under construction, our home page will feature many of the beautiful designs our students created.
Ted Waring (twaring@cln.etc.bc.ca)
Lakewood Elementary
http://204.239.144.130/
Victoria, BC, Canada

British Columbia Earth Day Groceries Reports - 1997

April 22/97
Hello Arbor Heights Elementary School from Valleycliffe Elementary School in Squamish B.C.
We are just reporting in.... that once again we had a very successful earth day grocery bag project. 225 students k-7 decorated earth day bags...our super kindergarten students decorated the bags with their buddies. We delivered the bags the day before earth day to three grocery stores that our families shop at. We are looking forward to reading the reports as you get them. Congratulations again for conintuing this very worthwhile awareness project!
Sandi Paterson, vcel@sd48.mountain-inter.net
Friendly teacher librarian
Valleycliffe Elementary School
Box 2240, Squamish, BC Canada
V0N 3G0
(604) 892-9394
fax: (604) 892-3664
Children from kindergarten to grade 6 decorated 262 grocery bags. It was a tremendous success! The store we got them from displayed them around the store and this weekend will put them out for people to pack their groceries. The store manager thought it was a great idea and can't wait for next year. The one change I would make would be to start it in March so the children's work could be displayed around the school before they went to the store. See you next year!
Nancy Paulley paulley@direct.ca
South Slope Elementary
Burnaby, BC, Canada
I am writing on behalf of Horse Lake Elementary School in 100 Mile House, British Columbia. We had 3 classes participate in the Earth Day Grocery Bag project. We decorated 68 bags for a small local store "Lone Butte General Store." A Grade 2, 3, and 4 class took part this year.
We had a lot of fun - the students really care! so it is quite easy to think of ideas for decorating.
Next year we can expand the number of classes and include a larger store as well. Thanks for your idea.
We would like to receive e-mail reprts from other schools. Thank-you!
Nancy Vincent
vincent@netshop.net
Horse Lake Elementary School
100 Mile House, B.C., Canada
From: Lakewood Elementary Victoria, BC
We have completed our Earth Day Grocery Bag Project with students from Grades 1 -7 participating. We decorated 250 bags and Thrifty Foods of Colwood will distribute them this week.
Best comment by a student : " I really want my Mom to get my bag when she goes shopping !! "
The staff and students thought that this project was very awesome !! We would love to take part in it again next year. It has also raised the awareness of reusing paper bags.
Ted Waring twaring@cln.etc.bc.ca
Vice Principal / Teacher
Thank you once again for initiating the Earth Day Grocery Bag Project. This is Southridge Elementary School's first time participating.We are a Kindergarten to Grade Seven school. Two hundred seventy students decorated paper bags from our nearby Overwaitea store. These were delivered to the store on April 18th and students are excitedly awaiting seeing their grooceries packed in these bags on Earth Day!
Brenda Hawley Brenda_Hawley@fc.schdist57.bc.ca
Southridge Elementary School
Prince George, British Columbia

British Columbia Earth Day Groceries Reports - 1996

Thank you so much for making this project happen. Our school, Hart Highlands Elementary School, Kindergarten to Grade 7, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada decorated 238 grocery bags for our local Overwiatea grocery store. Great idea! Thank you so much for sharing.

Brenda Hawley
Phawleyb@vortex.netbistro.com

This year I coordinated the project with other school in our district. I had 9 elementary schools that participated and we made 1500 bags. Thanks for the great project!

Chris Froese
CHFROESE@central.schdist60.bc.ca

Collee Heights Elementary School kids colored and returned 385 bags to the local Overwaitea grocery store for Earth Day. We also had a garbage pick-up aound the school grounds and we encircled the school with a mass hug in a symbolic gesture representing hugging the earth.

David Greenberg
dgreenbe@cln.etc.bc.ca

We had a wonderful Earth Week at Salt Spring Elementary. Daily events kept us busy and these culminated in our becoming an Environmental Green School on Friday, We had a great assembly and celebrated with a spiral dance and cake.
Our students embraced the grocery bag project with enthusiasm and decorated 214 bags which were displayed prominantly in our two grocery stores before being given out to happy customers.The bags were beautiful and showed much care and thought. We are a small school of 180 students, so 214 bags is an impressive number!
Please send me the final count so I can share with the students and the grocery store managers.
Thank you Mark for coordinating this environment awareness project.

Maria Dammel
madammel@cln.etc.bc.ca

Thank you once again for organizing the Earth day activity. We here at Royston, once again enjoyed participating in this very worthwhile activity. We decorated and distributed 500+ bags to 3 local grocery stores. Great stuff. The kids really enjoyed it.
"It was fun" Kara
"We learned about Earth day and how you can make the world a better place" Monica
"I liked the songs we learned to go with this" Aaron
"We learned not to pollute and we should recycle" Allen
Thanks again, Have a good one.

Keith Kroeker
Royston Elementary School
Royston, B.C. CANADA
kkroeker@sd71.bc.ca

Hello, this is our second year participating from Evelyn Dickson School. We put out 250 bags this year.
Keep up the great work! We had a lot of fun again and the community loves the bags!

Brian Naka
Nechako School District
Vanderhoof, B.C.
Canada
bnaka@cln.etc.bc.ca
Fax: 567-9392

British Columbia Earth Day Groceries Reports - 1995

Our elementary school got involved with the Earth Day Grocery Bag project. We decorated 80 bags from our local grocery store: V and S Foods.

Ann Tilley, teacher-librarian
antilley@cln.etc.bc.ca
Martin Morigeau Elem-Jr. Sec. School
Box 69,
Canal Flats, B.C.
V0B 1B0
604- 349- 5665
Our junior high school's science class decorated
45 grocery bags 44 students
We enjoyed participating in this project. Next year we hope to have all 300 students involved.

Laurie-Anne Barisoff
Teacher-librarian
lbarisof@cln.etc.bc.ca
We provided 400 bags to the local grocer. Will we receive the results from the day? Thank You.
clymerba@dlu.edu
The students at our school had a wonderful time colouring grocery bags. It turned out to be great competition within the school for what class could colour the most bags. The total number of students at our school is 623. We coloured a total of 1292 bags. Incredible. Please pass the total count back to me so that I can post it in our school. Thanks Rod Macdonald North Saanich Middle School Sidney B.C. Canada romacdon@cln.etc.bc.ca
Our school, Thornhill Primary School, in Terrace B.C. Canada took part in the Earth Day bag decorating. One of our local grocers (Safeway) was thrilled to supply our school with the paper bags. We requested 200 and he asked if we would take 1000!! This year, that was too large a request but next year I plan to coordinate our school district and do 1000+ bags.

Our school is a K-3 school with 278 children. We decorated 216 bags. I am not sure if any other school in our district took part in this project. Our school district is in northwest British Columbia and we have a total of 5400 students from 20 different schools.

Everyone involved in this project had great things to say about it and we look forward in taking part in it again next year.

Thank you for the wonderful idea. I look forward to receiving the final tally.

Sincerely, 

Greer Kaiser
gkaiser@cln.etc.bc.ca
Grade 2 Teacher
Thornhill Primary School
Terrace B.C. Canada
I guess I must have trashed my original posting for this project.. Hope the following is all the information you require, if not e-mail me with what else you need to know.

Alexander Park Elementary School - Golden, British Columbia Canada
Population 300 students
Number of Bags decorated - 127 ( 5 classes took part)

Please send me the results of the project so I can share them with the students who participated in the project. 

Roxanne Bennett,
Resource Teacher,
Alexander Park Elem.
Box 464
Golden, B.C., Canada
rbennett@cln.etc.bc.ca
Our school participated in the project and completed our messages on 400+ bags. The school is Royston Elementary School, Royston, British Columbia CANADA Please send a tally to the following address when compiled so that I can write a short article for our local newspaper.

Thank you.
Please send info to
keithk@huey.nic.bc.ca
Thanks again.
Keith
Our school, A.S.Matheson Elementary in Kelowna, B.C. decorated a total of 190 bags! All the kids had a great time doing it. Look forward to doing it again next year.

Dave Currier
dcurrier@schdist23.bc.ca
In Prince Geore B.C. Canada College Heights Elementary School kids colored 200 bags and returned them to the local Overwaitea grocery store.

David Greenberg
dgreenbe@cln.etc.bc.ca
This is a report from Oaklands Elementary School in Victoria, BC. We decorated and sent out to our sponsoring store about 174 bags. The staff and students who participated in the project as well as the store employees appear to have really appreciated the opportunity to v:e!o something so simple yet effective. Thanks, Mark, for spearheading the project again this year.

Jack Greenwell
Neil Hughes
nhughes@cln.etc.bc.ca
Our count from North Oyster Elementary School in Ladysmith B.C. is 300 bags. The project was an incredible success. Both the students and the grocery store loved it.

Just out of general interest: On Earth Day I was out canoeing along the coast near Ladysmith and stopped at an isolated beach for a break. An injured mature, male bald eagle was perched on a log injured. My friend and I captured the eagle (with a little help) and took it to the Raptor Centre in a nearby village. At this time and point it looks like it will recover! Probably some type of poisoning. Let's keep the Earth clean of herbicides!

Thanks,
P. Grey
pgrey@bbs.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca
Thornhill Elementary school, which lies across the playground from us here in Terrace took part in the Earth Day project as well. I took a sample to them late Thursday afternoon and some of my collegues at that school saw the value in such a project as well so I am happy to report another 120 bags to the Terrace count.

These 120 bags were from Thornhill Elementary School (4-7).

I really liked the idea of making kites out of the used bags -- maybe we'll do that next year!

Greer Kaiser  
gkaiser@cln.etc.bc.ca
Teacher Thornhill Primary
Terrace B.C. Canada
Hi, Mark. Just a note to let you know how many bags we made and how many students participated. We had great comments from the students, teachers, grocery store manager and customers. Thanks for a wonderful idea. We would really like to participate next year and have more schools in Fort St. John involved.

We had classes from 2 schools involved (366 students). We produced 425 bags. I hope that I'm not too late for an update/report on how many schools, etc participated.

Thanks again for the idea. Keep us informed for next year if you are doing any changes. Oh- we tried to scan some photos for you, but they weren't good quality. Next year, I guess!

Chris Froese
chfroese@cln.etc.bc.ca
Chris Froese
Fort St. John, BC, Canada
I am Sandi, a teacher from Squamish, B.C and our school joined in on the grocery bag project.

We had 200 students from Gr 1-7 particpate and we gave them to two local stores. It was particularly great at one store because it was the Grand Opening of the store and the owner's son goes to our school. The community response was fantastic! Hats off to you for organizing this very worthwhile event!!

Sandi Paterson
spaterso@cln.etc.bc.ca
P.S. I think your www page is great!!

British Columbia Earth Day Groceries Reports - 1994

Hi. I read your invitation to participate back in March and decided that I would try to encourage our school to participate. We designed and coloured 273 bags which were delivered to one of our local IGA food stores and the customer response was very positive. One Woman decided that she would hang the bag on her wall after unpacking it. All the students and staff were enthused by the idea and the process. Thanks for the idea. I'd be real interested in knowing about your tabulated results. We'll look forward to doing the same again next year. Thanks again.
Roger Bockman
Grades 5/6
Nkwala Elementary
Penticton B.C.
Canada
email: rbockman@cln.etc.bc.ca
Here are the numbers for Oaklands Elementary School, Victoria, B.C.
Altogether there were 293 bags distributed through two stores. One store was particularly pleased with the idea. What do you think of publishing a list of the stores that participated in the project?
Do you have any health regulations in the US that make this project difficult to sell to stores?
Message-Id:
From: esbcvi02 (Jack Greenwell)
Hi Mark and third graders! Wow what a great idea! Our whole school is participating in this project and each student is producing at least 1 bag for distribution. We should have all 300 hundred in the store by Earth Day!
We live in a small town ( less than 5000) called Vanderhoof. We are located geographically at the center ( or pretty close to it) of British Columbia in Canada.
Some of the bags I have seen are excellent and students have really been enjoying themselves as they decorate their bags and think about their planet!
Thanks again for a great project!
Evelyn Dickson Elementary School
Vanderhoof, B.C.
Canada
From: bnaka@cln.etc.bc.ca
Brian Naka, Teacher
Evelyn Dickson Elementary, SD #56
Community Learning Network
British Columbia
My student teacher donated 150 brown paper bags and had the grade one and twos decorate them for Earth Day. The press came and took photos, and she explained about the network. If you send us your mailing address, we'll send you a photo from the paper. Our school was not mentioned- North Chemainus Primary, Chemainus, B.C. What a great idea you had!
From: Margaret deWeese
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