From The Weekly Sentinel, I found seventh and eighth graders from the Noble Middle School in North Berwick, Maine, are recycling school cafeteria wastes.  As a result of a year-long project, the school’s “Green Team” is both reducing the amount of waste that goes to area landfills (saving money), and providing rich earth for their vegetable garden.  The vegetables will find their way into the school cafeteria next fall, completing a cycle of sustainability.  The volunteer project members collect uneaten vegetables for their compost tumblers.   The tumblers are turned 5 times a day by the same group of volunteers.  One risk the team had to deal with was that they soon ran out of tumbler space.  The contingency was to take it to the high school’s “earth tub” composter.

This is not the only project the team is working on.  Another one is to collect aluminum cans and plastic bottles for recycling.  To date, in 18 months, the team has collected 11,000 cans and 12,000 plastic bottles.  They also have an awareness campaign for those pesky non-recyclable milk cartons.  They collected them and put them on display to show how many are used.

We, at EarthPm are positive that these efforts are going on across the country and across the world.  Let us know what kinds of projects your area is undertaking to help the environment and to save money.  Who knows, perhaps one or more of those project leaders may qualify for the Shamrock 7™.  Watch this site for the selection criteria coming in July 2010.