I'm Starting an Environmental Club! Episode 3: We are Yoda

Us versus gross chemicals:
this is what it looks like

GEEKs is back, with a brand-new episode of our series I'm Starting an Environmental Club! In this episode, the RAMS environmental club wages an epic battle against gross chemicals. Who will win? Find out below, or else skip to the bottom to see why this episode is called "We are Yoda". Thanks for reading!

Gross chemicals

Gross Chemicals

School buildings can be disgusting places sometimes, with every desk being used by half a dozen kids every day. To fend off germs, many schools use all-purpose cleaners with long ingredients lists of chemicals that can be hazardous to people as well as to ecosystems. To remove this grossness from the RAMS school environment, we decided that our first official action as the RAMS Earth Group would be...

The Green Cleaners Project

Our project turned out to be very straightforward and went pretty much exactly according to plan. To simplify things, here's what we did:

1) Ask teachers for donations of their EMPTY cleaner spray bottles

We left a box for donated bottles in the group advisor's classroom, then sent out an email and a paper notice to all the teachers to advertise our project. The teachers were very supportive, and the box filled up quickly with empty bottles. It's important that they're empty because we don't want to be dumping chemicals down the drain- it's much better for them to be used.

Our beautiful labels

2) Follow OSHA labeling rules

It turns out that cleaners used in a school must be correctly labeled with ingredients for safety purposes. We peeled off the bottles' old labels and replaced them with new ones designed by the group, which advertised the Earth Group and listed ingredients. 

3) Fill the bottles with nicer cleaners

We based our cleaning product loosely on Alice's Wonder Spray cleaner, which is pretty much vinegar and water. Check out the full recipe here. Our group is lucky to be based in a science classroom, so we had funnels and beakers handy and felt like real chemical engineers or something.

Yoda also basks in glory
after a battle

4) Redistribute the bottles and bask in glory

We are one step closer to ridding the world of gross chemicals, and the school staff has been really happy with the project. It's great to see other people so happy to be using a healthier and safer cleaning product. We'll continue to refill empty bottles as teachers continue to donate them.

What We Learned

In this episode we learned that even though we're only a small group of students, just starting our Earth Group, we can actually do really useful projects at the middle school. Our green cleaners keep gross chemicals from being used at school, and they also raise awareness and inspire others to replace their household chemicals- now any student stuck cleaning desks for detention will have a good look at our beautiful green cleaner labels and get to use the cleaners themselves. Basically, our group is just like Yoda: we're small, we love green, and we're very powerful. 

Thanks for reading, and check back soon for another action-packed episode of I'm Starting An Environmental Club!