The Green Dragon

Green Wall Project Links

2008-08-27T14:53:00.004-04:00

Green Living Technologies

Green Roofs For Healthy Cities, an excellent section on green wall design and news

TD Grant

ELT Living Wall site

Community Orgs

2008-08-18T13:39:00.000-04:00

Community Environmental Organizations can be found here

Electronic City Registration Page

2008-08-18T13:37:00.001-04:00

Here is the page for the Electronic City project.

Project Links

2008-08-18T13:35:00.001-04:00

For our grant program, Live Green Toronto

The City as Educator

2008-08-13T16:56:00.002-04:00

A central feature of the Geography, Civics, and Challenge and Change courses will be a focus on the city, our city, the city of Toronto.

The Association of Municipalities of Toronto has an excellent set of resources for us to start with.

24 Hour Famine

2008-04-11T11:17:00.002-04:00

What: 24 Hour Famine
Where does the money go? This year, World Vision is donating the money that is raised from the famine to children in Chennai, India. If you’d like to know more, just ask. I also have a short video I will be showing participants.
How to raise money: I will hand out sponsor forms to all participants, and everyone will try to raise as much money as possible. Usually people get about 10 sponsors with donations from about 5.00$ and up. But do what you can, every little bit helps! There will be a contest to see who raises the most, and a prize will be given to the winner.
When: On April 26th-27th, 2008. We will meet at the school shortly before dinner and either have a potluck, although we must make sure not to have leftovers, they may be tempting, or we will find other arrangements. But we will eat a meal before the famine, to make sure everyone is well nourished before we begin. The famine will begin around 7 or 8 (the dinner will be a very early one) and I will give more details soon!
Where: At the school, we will have teacher chaperons, Mr. Ferraro being one.
What to bring: a sleeping bag and pillow, toiletries, stuff to entertain yourself, such as books, games, etc. and anything else you think you might need.
If you have any questions/concerns, please feel free to email me at sari.park@hotmail.com

24-Hour Famine

2008-04-11T11:16:00.000-04:00

Total Carbon Emissions saved by Project Light Switch

2008-03-06T13:23:00.005-05:00

Today the form 4 chemistry class worked out how much CO2 we will save with Project Light Switch through a simple math process that YOU can do for YOUR school!

Its fairly simple, for the first step you need to find out how many bulbs you've replaced and their wattage per bulb, and assign them a name so that it is easier to work with. We went with A,B,C and D but your free to chose what you want.
Make a graph to make it easier to see and organize.

Bulbs # Replaced Watts saved per bulb Total Saved
A 7 40W 40W x 7 = 280W
B 25 90W 90W x 25 = 2250W
C 8 55W 55W x 8 = 440W
D 9 7W 7W x 9 = 63 W

Total: 49 192W 3033W

3. Now that you've completed your chart you need to find how long on average they are on for in a year. Our school day is about seven hours long plus about two hours of teachers and students working before and after school so we said 9 hours a day. Now not all of the light are used all day so we estimated that each one would be on for half of the day( 4.5 h/day).

4. After that you have to fine how many days the lights are used in the year. There is just 10 months to the school year, minus our two breaks, Christmas break being 3 weeks (0.75 months) and March break being ( 0.5 months). Now convert that to how many days it would be.

10 months - .75 months - .5 months
OR = 266.5 Days
304 days - 22.5 days - 15 days

5. Of course don't forget that we only attend school on the weekdays.

266.5 ( 5/7) = 190 Days

6. Convert that to hours.

Hours = 4.5h (hours on per day) x 190 days = 855

7. So from all of this we know know that we save 3033W running for 855 hours. Your almost there but for the web site we found to exactly calculate our
( www.carbonify.com/carbon-calculator.htm ) carbon emissions you need to find how much kilowatt hours because that is what the websites asks for.

3033W (855h) = 2 593 215 kWh per year Or to 2.59 million kWh

8. Find that number per month is...

2593215/12 = 216 101 kWh per month

9. Plug that into the website and we got...

1,944.909 total tons of CO2 annually

10. Change that to kilograms easily by multiplying 1,945 tons by how many kilograms are in a ton ( 907 ) and you get....

1 764 115 kg of CO2 !!!!!!!

11. And last but definitely not least CELEBRATE for doing a great job for the environment!

Progress pictures

2008-03-05T11:36:00.003-05:00

Progress pictures coming soon, WHOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAA SPRING BREAK... I wrote that message about spring break on the last day of school, little did I know.....

2008-03-05T11:34:00.003-05:00

Check this shizz, we replaced all these lightbulbs
7 of the 50 watt,120 volt bulbs
25 of the 100 watts 20 volts bulbs
9 of the 20 watts 12 volt bulbs
8 of the 65 watt 120 volt bulbs

Project Light Switch Updates: How many students does it take to change a light bulb?

2008-03-01T19:20:00.003-05:00

On Friday, many students stayed after school to help with Project Light Switch. Over the course of some hours, students changed the bulbs in the school and began the recycling part of the project. Gareth Thompson, David Ulbryich, and Aaron Goodbaum are to be commended for their service to the school. Aaron learned how to change a light bulb!

Green Wall project updates

2008-03-01T19:04:00.004-05:00

Parent support has been amazing. To build on the important work of your project, many parents have come forward to lend their support. To further the project along, we should plan a trip to one of these interesting events. Elevated Landscape Technologies, a green building firm, has outlined a few very interesting events coming up soon.
ELT has a wonderful gallery of walls at their page, which can be found here.

GREEN WALL EVENTS:
Canada Blooms March 7-11th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre - www.canadablooms.com

International Home & Garden Show March 15-18th at the International Centre - www.internationalhomeshow.ca

Green Living Show April 27-29th Direct Energy Centre - www.greenlivingshow.ca

Earth Eco Footprint Test

2008-02-20T11:24:00.002-05:00

Alex has found a website that calculates how many earths that would be needed to withstand the world population if everyone were like you. http://www.earthday.net/footprint/

Green Wall Project

2008-02-13T16:45:00.004-05:00

Why not try to build one of these green walls at our school?

A living wall is a vertical garden. Plants are rooted in fibrous material anchored to a wall. Water trickles down between the sheets and feeds moss, vines and other plants. Bacteria on the roots of the plants metabolize air impurities such as volatile organic compounds. Queen's University built one, and their web site detailing the advantages of the wall to health and well being can be found here.

Launch Day:

2008-02-13T11:19:00.002-05:00

Agenda:

Outreach Board
Recycling Program
Begin Project Light Switch

Calendar

2008-02-12T21:02:00.000-05:00

Below you will find a link that you can use build a calendar to note your project deadlines, goals, as well as notify students about events and activities. I may need to add your username for permission to post. Also, you will notice that on the bottom of the window there is a section for "labels for this post." That is where you should formalize the labels for the all future postings.

2008-02-08T11:33:00.001-05:00

Inequality
Donations
-Food bank
-Clothing drive
-Every kid donates 1 non-perishable food item, and they get a gold
star. Cash gold stars for prizes?
Canvasing, community awareness
-keep content fresh
-create a research team to collet new information
-Make a calendar
-Make a list of events to put on the calendar

Immigration
-Guest speakers

Climate change
Little things
-Get public coffee machine
-Get personal mugs
Draft carbon footprint on board/website
-Big graph
Pot luck lunches
-Once a month or so

Community service
Post opportunities on the board/website

Garbage Chart Item list
-Scale (average bathroom scale will do, hopefully the platform should be 2 feet by 2 feet but we can do smaller, this if for weighing the garbage)
-Chalkboard (this can be the student chalkboard that alex will be requesting)
-Sticky pad velcro (this is to make a large cardboard arrow facing the graph that can be moved up and down. This is to show last week/yesterdays weigh in to give a visual impression of improvement or regression)

http://www.ledtronics.com/ds/mr16-45/ (better but more expensive)

http://www.ledtronics.com/ds/mr16-12/ (cheaper)

Announcement
Mission statement
We the civics class of the dragon academy have an idea to promote positive social and environmental change within our community. We recognize that our generation has a problem with apathy, and usually publicly led projects for developing the community don't work out. This is why we've mapped out four sections for improvement within our school. These are environmental, Social, Economic inequality, and citizenship and immigration issues. We are interested in getting everyone in our school involved in this project, because without the support of the community, this project is likely to fail. Our project goals are:
-Increase social awareness
-Increase community involvement
--facilitate an ethic of environmental stewardship
-Addressing inequality

Topics: Environmental
-turn off the lights
-recycle vs garbage thing
-bring in mugs for coffee (form 3+)
-Lighting situation (e.i. replacing them)

Topic: dragon academy board
-where it is
-events
-community service opportunities
-House events/ sports
-cleaning duties
-discussion topics

Jobs?

2008-02-08T11:28:00.001-05:00

Get light-bulbs---> Halvorson (emma has the list of what we need)
Light-bulb installation----> Max and Megit
Clear out office-----> everyone
Coffee committee----> Darcy
Boxes for food/clothing drive----> Beatty
Make signs------> Max
Pillar headings----->?
Houses----> Megit
Events-----> darcy
Draft financial requests----->?
Recycling-----> Max

project proposal

2008-02-08T11:26:00.001-05:00

Mission statement
We the civics class of the dragon academy have an idea to promote positive social and environmental change within our community. We recognize that our generation has a problem with apathy, and usually publicly led projects for developing the community don't work out. This is why we've mapped out four sections for improvement within our school. These are environmental, Social, Economic inequality, and citizenship and immigration issues. We are interested in getting everyone in our school involved in this project, because without the support of the community, this project is likely to fail. Our project goals are:
-Increase social awareness
-Increase community involvement
--facilitate an ethic of environmental stewardship
-Addressing inequality

Monday launch!

2008-02-07T13:43:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the Green Dragon program!

2008-01-25T11:45:00.000-05:00

This is the test post for the Green Dragon blog.