Grade 8's Will Live in a Whole New World

I remember when I was 14. That sounds like one of those statements that follows with " I had to walk a half an hour to school, shovel my driveway, and there were no games to play" . While these things are all true, that is not what is on the agenda today. What I remembered when I was chatting with some grade 8's recently in Squamish was that I challenged everything that I could, I questioned everything, and I did not take no for an answer when I was in grade 8. I remember sitting after school with the teacher questioning his every teaching with my friends and now I know why he used to say " I gotta get going now".
The most important thing I remember about grade 8 is that it is a time to question things, and so I posed the question to the students about what they could make, change, or improve to try to reduce waste. I told the grade 8's it was their job in life to question and want to change old ways and that other age classes could stick to routines and do the same old things. So they came up with some cool ideas and started thinking about new ways of doing things for a bit. Sure, some of these sound like far fetched ideas but so was typing on a screen to send words to someone else in the world at one time.
Here is a shot of some ideas they came up with:

 A few other amazing things that are going on in the schools right now are:

1. Whiteboards- Many classes are using whiteboards which saves a ridiculous amount of paper and money for the classroom. What a terrific paper saving and cost saving measure! Way to Go!

2. Amy Erskine at Donn Ross Middle School uses pieces of old fabric to erase whiteboards. This is another amazing opportunity to up-cycle and save the cost of whiteboard erasers. Each town has reuse it centres that are a great source of old fabric. 

One of my favourite ideas from the day was online homework, which is very doable and would save a lot of paper!

If  there are more grade 8's out there that want to come up with a new idea to help reduce waste, please send it to slrdzerowaste@gmail.com. If we all could come up with one little idea that helped reduce waste and we were able to implement it, that would go a long way!