It is easy to see that the New London-Spicer (NL-S) YES! team is going to have another productive year. They are starting right by growing healthy food for healthy minds while also fine-tuning their milk carton recycling and hydration station campaigns.
The passive solar greenhouse that was just a dream this past spring for the NL-S team has come to fruition. It is about about 70% done and there are plans to have a vertical access wind turbine incorporated into the design. A big hit to this project has been the passing of Chuck Waibel of Garden Goddess Enterprises in Milan. He was a generous man with a great vision of a food system that allows everyone to enjoy and benefit from healthy, locally produced food. He had so much more to give and will be missed by many. With the NL-S food system starting to solidify and many others already producing delicious, local food Chuck’s vision lives on. The work now at NL-S is to inspire lunchroom staff with the benefits of using food produced on campus in daily lunches and developing a greenhouse ethic so that everyone can benefit from this powerful tool for education and sustenance.
Through a creative partnership with the robotics club the YES! team hopes to solve the problem of waste milk left in cartons that are off to be recycled. They are envisioning some kind of compactor that will crush the cartons and thus get rid of any waste milk. The school has developed an impressive rubric that encourages students to think thoughtfully about their school environment. With this they hope to incorporate recycling not only of milk cartons but recycling of all kinds and better signage to go with it.
With many great projects underway the NL-S YES! team is not forgetting about all the great projects that they already have going and the attention they require such as their hydration stations. Hoping to get the most bang for their buck, NL-S is planning to purchase water bottles to promote their hydration stations and also create a revenue stream which they can tap into to help fund their current and future projects.
