GSA Celebrates Earth Day

This year the GSA middle school participated in The Earth Day Groceries Project—an environmental awareness project designed to enhance students' environmental knowledge, along with skills in art, computer science, geography, math, and science. The project also helps educate and empower students to make a difference in their communities.

Ms. Lamare borrowed 100 paper grocery bags from our local Randalls. Students decorated the bags with environmental messages about reuse, recycling, wildlife, etc. The bags were then returned to the grocery store and on Earth Day, April 22, customers received their groceries—along with the message that GSA students care about the environment— in the decorated bags.

This idea began in Seattle, Washington when teacher Mark Ahlness came up with the idea of decorating paper grocery bags for Earth Day in a 1993 summer workshop for teachers. That first year, 43 schools and more than 10,000 students from across the U.S. and Canada decorated over 13,000 Earth Day bags. By 1999, nearly 1,200 schools participated, and students decorated almost 400,000 grocery bags!

The middle school also attended the opening of the new Disney movie Earth in Barton Creek Square, and the Green Team decorated re-usable shopping bags to commemorate the day.