Think Globally Act Locally | The Power Of R

There's no question that Highland's Eco-Team has made massive progress this year in their school and around the community. They have mobilized and organized to effectively implement school-wide composting, recycling, battery collection, broom pulling (invasive foreign plant species destruction), fund-raising, and awareness campaigns. The Eco-Team has even created their own website to organize their efforts further and help new recruits become educated faster. The Eco-Team even has a delegation that sits in on Comox Town Council meetings to offer youth perspectives on environmental and development initiatives.  It has been a year of steady building and hard work but what they have achieved in such a short amount of time is remarkable. Well done team! Thank you for being community leaders who make a positive difference.

Highland's Eco-Team has become a family for me this year. Although I was unable to attend all of the meetings, after school, and weekend gatherings, the team was extremely motivated to push through some really tough challenges on their own steam. Initiating a compost program in a school is tricky because it requires students to pick up the compost buckets from classrooms each day and hand wash them each week. This year members of the Eco-Team rose to the challenge every single day to make that happen. The effort has paid off. Thousands of pounds of solid waste has been diverted from the landfill. In September there will be tons of fresh, homemade, nutrient rich dirt to play with. Everyday is Earth Day at Highland Secondary.

To send your best to Highland please leave a comment on this blog and then visit the team's website http://highlandecoteam.com where you can order a Highland Eco-Team shirt to show your support. Have a happy Earth Day today.

“Zac has been an inspiration to Highland's Eco Team. His support and ability to network with other organizations has been instrumental in our success as a group of individuals seeking action and systemic change. It is because of Zac we have a professional looking website, and it is because of Zac our fall school wide assembly was deeper in scope and more informative than it would have been without him.
Zac has been a coach, an advisor, our own special guru and a role model. We consider him an integral part of our Eco Team and are grateful he is such an active member of our community. It is the bringing together of such individuals that will catalyze the change needed to improve our world.”

"I am often telling people about Zac Whyte and what a great speaker he is, however, every time he presents, he never ceases to blow my mind. The students are simply captivated, resting on his every word.”

In late April I was invited to speak at Valley View Elementary School. My presentation  addressed issues of garbage and actions we could take locally to shift the growing consumer trend that has doubled our per-capita garbage output by 100% in only 10 years. I spoke about our responsibility as an educated and capable nation of individuals to lead initiatives that 'better the planet' in every sense of the phrase.  The presentation really resonated with the youth and teachers in the room that day because what happened next... well let's just say that it makes me proud to be surrounded by such an incredible group of community leaders.

The entire school rallied over the next two weeks to fulfill the schools 2009-2010 theme of "Making A Difference." Hours upon days of debate and discussion followed the presentation about the issues addressed in my talk. The school decided to hold a penny drive. " I thought the kids would raise about $80," teacher Andrew Ferneyhough told me after the fundraiser, "I was taken aback when they raise almost $100 per division." The week following the penny drive united the school in further discussions about the Comox Valley, Canada, and the rest of the world on the whole, as they rolled a staggering $1500 worth of pennies together. Students were led by teachers and explored the history of pennies, properties of copper, the significance of Queen Elizabeth II, and the origin of money among other topics. It was "applied learning, the best type of learning" Grade 6 teacher Jay Bridges commented.

On May 13th the students invited me back to the school because they had a surprise for me. I was presented a hand crafted cheque for $1400 and a wagon of neatly rolled and boxed pennies to endorse it. "We used a $100 to celebrate with pizza," one of the kids blurted out. "Was it fun to celebrate your accomplishments and make a positive difference in the world," I asked. The room collectively cheered "yes!" It was energizing. The school had chosen to donate the pennies to fresh water, education, health care and alternate income projects in Kenya through a Canadian child rights organization called Free The Children.

These are the moments that I love. I love to see the shift in the eyes of kids when they make a connection or realize the individual power they have to direct positive change in their world. It gives me chills, good chills. What's interesting, is when it happens for a majority of the kids - it's not during the talk, during the fund raising,  or during the learning, penny rolling (in this case) or in the camaraderie they feel with their friends united together in their common goal - it's when they reflect on their journey and see how their journey has impacted the world. Actions like this are outside of ourselves and I am grateful that today the earth has found over 400 new harbingers of her true spirit.

Congratulations Valley View Elementary on taking ownership of your home and becoming a powerful part of your global community. Let's celebrate that everyday from now.

I was upgrading all my computer bits the other day and got really down about the amount of electronic waste (e-waste) that I was creating. I posted something like 'upgrading my computer and creating enough e-waste to build a sailboat' on my Facebook account. To cool off my guilt I decided to take a walk with my family. A few blocks from my house, on a guys lawn, I saw an old Apple computer, a television and a blown-out stereo system. The items were free for the taking... and no one took them.

Even though the TV was free and worked perfectly - no one wanted it because it wasn't a 60" flat screen. The computer works but unless you live in Y2K (the year 2000) it's not even worth hitting the 'on button'. The computer parts I replaced on my computer were only five years old that day and even though they were the best parts you could buy five years ago, they definitely aren't cutting the mustard in 2010. Not if I want to stay in business.

Time is money  and our media tells us that "he who has the most toys wins."  Our combined obsession with consuming technology stems from staying ahead of the rest of the consumers out there. You can relate to this I'm sure. You need the latest cell phone to text faster and update your FB profile more regularly, or take pictures of everything (including junk on the side of the road), or how about a new ipod, or bike or video game system to out do your friends or create a better opportunity for yourself to buy some, friends that is? Do we buy this stuff to say to our friends "hey look at this cool new trinket" or do we buy this stuff to rub it in our friend's faces? "Haha wouldn't you love to be me right now," we secretly say. That is essentially it, right? Maybe I'm looking into this too deeply but I believe there is some truth to this mentality and it's filling up our landfills with electronics as a result.

Comox Valley Waste Management handles over 100,000 tons of waste every year and I have seen, with my own eyes,  television sets getting dumped directly into the landfill. That happens because some people couldn't be bothered to take it to a Encorp Return-It Depot or their local television supplier for recycling. By throwing a television into the landfill (of which there are thousands) we are exposing the earth to poisons in high concentrations. Monitors are full of lead. Lead can cause cancer in animals and in humans when it's mixed with ground water and consumed.

So here's the thing. We are going to be consuming in the future but now is the time to start thinking about how to minimize our consumption. The second priority that needs to be addressed is cradle to grave corporate responsibility for the products we buy. That means when we buy a product - an ethical disposal plan for that product is already in place. Whomever sells the product is responsible for it's earth friendly and sustainable disposal, reuse or recycling. Corporations would be freaking out and developing smaller, safer and more earth friendly products as a result. Selling a carcinogen (cancer causing material) like lead in a product would be too expensive to dispose of so manufactures wouldn't use it, period.

Some examples of this type of system are already in play. When you buy a new computer you pay a disposal tax. However, people still throw electronics in the landfill anyway. We need another law that says throwing away toxic hardware is illegal, or better yet, we just need more collective common sense.

Here is a link to your local Encorp Return-It Depot. Please take your e-waste/electronics there for proper disposal and recycling. :)

In Campbell River visit 1580-F Willow Street to recycle your electronics

In the Comox Valley visit 1255 McPhee Ave. to recycle your electronics