Do your students know how much paper is wasted at their school? Are your students active and involved in a good recycling program at their school? Let the students of Brown School show you how they started a paper waste recycling project to try to be more sustainable on a day-to-day level from the students all the way up to the administration! The footage of this documentary was taken by the students at Brown School , Schenectady , NY as a way to document a recycling project that they implemented using OEDSI’s Sustainable Education Program in 2004. The students identified and researched the paper waste at their school by collecting baseline information to find out how much paper was being wasted and the impact their school was having locally and globally. Following guidelines of OEDSI’s program, students created awareness within their school and managed to start a school-wide recycling program that included examining how to reduce, reuse and recycle paper on administrative, faculty and student levels. After a whole year OEDSI edited the footage taken by the Fifth and Eighth Grade Science Classes at Brown School and produced a film about their project to share with other students and teachers all over the world. This documentary can provide an example of what students and teachers can accomplish and how they can contribute toward a global effort of schools to improve environmental issues—no matter how small or large. This film is a great way to look at sustainability and the management of sustainable projects from a student's perspective! The documentary is a great example of how students can really take on projects and get involved if given the right tools and a chance. The documentary is also a model to remind educators of the importance of making sure their students follow sustainability projects through to a point that they can be adapted within the school. Brown School is a great model for this example because their Paper Waste Sustainability Project is no longer running due to faculty turnover and administrative change. The more we are able to implement these projects as a part of the culture of the school, the better chance we have in supporting the desire and efforts of students to make this world a more sustainable and healthy place for everyone! Key points you will learn about with this project: How students and teachers can start and manage a sustainable project How to use science to monitor waste How to interview people How to raise awareness about a project to the rest of the school Lessons learnt from the first year of a sustainable project and how to look at a project as a long-term commitment The importance of structured guidelines Deforestation associated with paper waste Download Instructions: To view the documentary of the Brown School Paper Waste Project and meet Brown School click on the “The Brown School Paper Recycling Project Documentary” link. . In order to save the video to your computer right click and choose ‘save target’. Choose a location on your computer where you can conveniently locate it. The download will take anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes depending on the speed of your connection. If it is going to take you longer than that and you would like to order a hard copy of the video for a small fee to cover the costs of materials please fill in this form. To download all word and PDF documents to your computer you can right click and choose 'Save Target As' and save them to a location on your computer. Brown School Paper Recycling Project Information Packet (PDF 60.8KB)   The Brown School Paper Recycling Project Documentary (movie file 93MB, 29 minutes)   Brown School Video and Information Packet Worksheet (word document 30KB) –student version (blank)   Brown School Video and Information Packet Answer Key(word document 35.5KB)- teacher version (contains questions, an answer key and some comments and discussion) To find supportive links and more information please visit our resource link for the ‘Brown School Paper Recycling Project ’.

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