Earth Day Network Blog Updates

The results are in for our student poster contest in honor of National School Lunch Week!

As part of Earth Day Network’s Green Schools Program, our National School Lunch Week campaign promotes the importance of health, nutrition and sustainable food production to U.S. K-12 students, parents, teachers and policymakers.

Just in time for National School Lunch Week, Earth Day Network has teamed up with the Harlem Globetrotters to bring kids a special message: To stay on top of your game, you have to eat right.

Check out their video:

Last week marked another historic milestone for the green schools movement.

It’s come down to a fight for local control.  Negotiations on the federal transportation bill are at a critical point and twenty years of gains on biking, walking and Safe Routes to School are at risk.

Cities and counties all over the country need transportation funding to build sidewalks and bikeways to make streets safer, get local economies moving, and encourage active living. But some members of Congress want to eliminate local access to these federal funds.

Will you ask your members of Congress to protect local access to funds for biking and walking projects?

Last Friday, our Education team broke ground on the fruit orchard at “newest career and technical high school in Lexington, Kentucky,” the Locust Trace Agriscience Farm. Through the generous support from The UPS Foundation, we were able to plant multiple peach trees with several representatives from the school, and we hope to plant up to a thousand (including a native chestnut forest) over the next school year!

Earth Day Network, in partnership with The UPS Foundation, today unveiled the first large-scale biodiesel production and education facility at a school in Appalachia. The facility was installed at Henry Clay High School in Lexington, Kentucky.

And that’s not all. Tomorrow, we’ll be planting a fruit tree orchard at the Locust Trace Agriscience Farm career and technological campus in Lexington.

Learn more here.

Recycling, a term that grew to international importance almost four decades ago, is commonly represented by images of blue plastic bins and bottle drives. However, in a 21st century, electronic-dominated world, recycling solely aluminum cans or plastic water bottles is not the only game in town. “E-waste,” waste from printer cartridges, mobile devices, and other small electronics, needs to become a more integral part of the recycling equation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the new farm to school grant program designed to educate students on their food’s origin and also increase the availability of local, fresh foods in schools.

Earth Day Network, in partnership with Wells Fargo, hosted a community work day at our newest venture – a school garden at the Yu Ying Public Charter School in Northeast, DC.

Pres. Obama Issues Green Schools Proclamation; Earth Day Network Calls upon Congress and the Administration to Fund Environmental Education