Baltimore County, MD Hello Baltimore County, 31 Jan 2019

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From YouTube: Clean, Green and Litter-free

Description

Find out how your group can make a difference in your community and help a local school win the Team BCPS Clean Green 15 Litter Challenge.

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(Smooth electronic music).

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Welcome to hello! baltimore county., I'm your host ellen kobler. litter is not just ugly. it's harmful to the environment..

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Will your group help to be part of the solution?

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we're joined today by debbie phelps, who runs the education foundation of baltimore county public schools and wes schmidt of the baltimore county department of environmental protection and sustainability?.

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To talk about how we can all make a difference.

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Thank you both for joining us., pleasure.

B

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And wes, first off,: could you give us a little perspective on litter and how damaging it is in our neighborhoods and in our environment?.

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Absolutely, litter can be damaging in a number of ways for our environment and our communities.

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it's,, first of all,, a visual detraction from the aesthetics of our communities and our natural spaces,. But it's also a conduit to carry certain toxins.

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And bacteria, even, into streams, and, eventually,, the chesapeake bay.

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so,. Eventually, it can even impact our food supply by getting into contact with fish and other aquatic organisms.

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Yeah,, so it's not just harmless and ugly., it's actually damaging. so, debbie,. Please tell us about the team. Bcps clean, green 15, litter, challenge,.

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Which is a collaborative initiative of the education foundation,, the school system,.

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The department of environmental protections and sustainability, and county executive johnny olszewski.

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So over the past five years, we've been able to launch this campaign to our 174 schools and programs and centers in baltimore county., and when you say collaborative,, it is collaborative, because we work with our county government,.

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We work with our school district, and we work with the community,, because this is something that we can take our children beyond the walls of their classrooms, beyond the walls of the schoolhouse, and put our arms around the community members and say, "it's, all our responsibility to make sure "that we're keeping our environment clean and safe." okay,. How does it work?

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well, how it works is that,. We have a website.

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Through baltimore county public schools, and you go on the website and you register if you want to participate, and then, very simple,, easy, 15 minute cleanups throughout the school day, on the playground, on the athletic fields,, but walking into your community with your community partners, like the boy scouts,, the girl, scouts, environmental protection agency organizations, are able to support our kids to go and have those pickups.

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And then record it, record the bags. You pick up, record the volunteers who help.

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it can't be any simpler than that.

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And then how does it benefit the county schools, other than the students who participate, and then, of course, other groups can, too,, but how does it benefit the schools?.

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So, as our schools have this community service project, and that's what it is,, it's keeping our community clean,, we go in, as a team, and we evaluate all the cleanups.

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And all the volunteers who have helped.

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and then,, we itemize the schools in reference to elementary, middle, high,, and we give them grants.

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so they're able to take what they've done within the community and go back the next year and actually implement a grant that has been awarded by our community partners..

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Very nice,, so any group can participate, and then, how do they participate so that the schools can get credit?.

B

Right, because team bcps includes all baltimore county stakeholders., anybody can participate, and as debbie mentioned, it can be scout groups, or church groups, or business groups,, or just your local community, association, or as an individual.. You can be out there and just do a 15 minute, litter pickup.

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Just when you're taking a walk, walking your dog,, maybe after a sports practice?.

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Just grab a few bags., that's all it takes. very simple.

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Alright, and then, debbie,: how do they designate a school.

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To get credit for their cleanup,, these community groups?.

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Absolutely,, so this is where our community can embrace the community schools. [ellen] nice.. So we have three zones in baltimore county, and you take a look at the schools that are in that zone, and then you say,, "I'm gonna help this elementary school, "or, this middle school, or this high school," or, "I'm gonna participate in a area such as chesapeake bay.

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"To be able to clean up that, too,", as well as what you've mentioned,.

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So,, it's putting our arms around everybody.

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To be able to come together as one, to resolve an issue that we need to in order to save our environment.

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Very nice,, so any group can do a cleanup, and then they just essentially pick what school they want to get the credit..

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And then the schools who have the most cleanups.

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Or volunteers, or, however, it works, they win, grants? [debbie]. They do win grants.

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Tell us about the projects., so a lot of schools who are trying to gain their green school certification,.

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This is definitely part of their action plan for that, too, as well., but some of the projects we've seen have included anything from butterfly gardens,.

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The environment within their school culture or on their school grounds,, it could be a reading garden, or it could even be trouts in the classroom.

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They're actually taking the environment and bringing it into the schoolhouse, and being able to learn more about it.

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and how it does make that impact, as he was mentioning with the chesapeake bay and things of that nature, with the fish that are there, and then how we go about eating them eventually,.

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So we want to make sure that they know all about what's happening in our ecosystem.

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Nice,, so it's not just the benefit of the actual cleanup,.

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And then the community members and the children who are picking up the trash and kind of getting the idea it's bad to litter,.

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But then there's lasting environmental benefits.

C

Very nice. and you know, there's even a component where we have had authors who have done books on the environment.

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That have come to the school and actually done assemblies,.

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To be able,, so there is also a connection with the environmental literacy,, as well as literacy, across our curriculum to be able to impact the reading and things of that nature.

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Great, so wes,: let's talk a little bit more about litter.

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What is your sense of why it happens and how we can prevent it?.

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Our department's been doing quite a lot of research on where litter comes from and how it gets into our environment and impacts our streams. one of the things that we've been able to narrow down is, we've come up with two main categories..

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We have unintentional litter and intentional litter.

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and unintentional litter can come from sources that are as simple as just failing to secure a trash bin. Lid.

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When it's set out for collection, for your regular, weekly, garbage, collection, or recycle bin,,.

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And that can be blown over by a gust of wind.

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It can be tampered with by wildlife., and then we have trash that's in the streets that eventually gets washed into the storm drains and into the streams. so,, as we say, litter doesn't stop where it drops.

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it's mobile,, so once it gets mobile, it keeps going until it hits the streams, and then, eventually, the chesapeake bay., intentional litter,. That can happen for a whole. Other number of reasons.

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one of the things that we found in our research, though, is that litter begets litter., so areas that are littered already are more likely to see more litter added to it later. On.

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So in conducting the clean, green 15, litter, pickup challenge,.

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We're cleaning up these natural spaces or other visible community spaces and sending this clear message that it's not socially acceptable to litter.

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and then by doing so, we're going to see less litter added in the future.

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So it's almost like a dirty dish in the sink.

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you sort of subconsciously, think, "oh,, that's where that goes." exactly., whereas if you see a clean, pristine area,, maybe you realize not to just drop the trash.

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Right, so part of it's about changing the social norms behind this problem and making it very clear.

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That it's not okay, to have litter strewn about.

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Yeah, and debbie, you also through the education foundation, are doing some reuse and recycling through your exciting new program called the exchangeree..

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Tell us real quick about that.

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We're very excited about that.. This is a 2,000 square foot, footprint of a collaborative space for teachers, and it's tiered, with school supplies. Year-Round, share the warmth, winter accessories, books in the spring,, but also a place to come to repurpose.

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And to be able to exchange items teacher to teacher.

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So we have teachers who retire, teachers who maybe changed grade levels, and you want,. You have these items in your classroom that you don't use? well,, you need them, or you need them,.

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Or someone else needs them., the teacher next door might not, and then you're done and it's summer,. So that's fantastic.. So it's another way.

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Of repurposing, recycling,, so it impacts 9,000 teachers.

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In baltimore, county public schools, and 114,000 students.

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Okay, sounds good, and just to recap, about the clean, green 15, litter program,.

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Can you explain to us how people can participate, again?.

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Absolutely, go on bcps.org. you're gonna. Do a search for team bcps, clean green 15,.

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And then you're going to see an informational direction that will tell you how to go about logging on,.

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So you want to put in your school. [ellen]. You pick the school. You want to benefit.

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Or you pick the school you want to benefit,.

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It could be,, I pick my school, or you're, my partner,, so you're gonna pick my school, and then we start doing our 15 minute cleanups.

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we can go and we can tabulate how many volunteers are there,.

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How many bags of trash we picked? Up,.

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And then it starts getting all calculated, and then comes before the committee in the spring,, and we do the big announcement, and the grants are awarded for the next year.

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Sounds good, well,. Thank you both so very much,, and thank you for watching hello! baltimore county.

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