Sustainable Classroom: Max Nu'uhiwa

I read this article on ePunahou. It is about Maxine Nu'uhiwa, a third grade teacher at punahou who is trying to make the third grade a more sustainable environment. She is trying "to reduce facilities wear and tear" by leaving shoes and slippers outside the classroom and putting tennis balls on the bottom of chairs. Ms. Nu'uhiwa is trying to "target the reduction of food waste." She purchased reusable lunch bags and plastic containers for her students and made reusable bags out of recycled CapriSun containers. "We can reduce lunch waste by 90 percent and total waste by 50 percent by the end of this year," she says. The class has already achieved a 75 percent reduction. I think this is a really great step in sustainability. If she teaches all her kids to be this sustainable, they will grow up and make a difference in our island. I look up to her for doing this because she actually is making a difference. I always think to myself that i will try to be more sustainable. I try to reuse and recycle things, but whe i actually think about what i do, i dont really do that much. The only sustainable thing that i always do is recycle my cans. I know i can do alot more, but i dont really set my mind to it. Another thing i do is waste alot of food. At home, we (my family and i) try not to get so much food so that we will finish it all, but in the end we usually end up tossing something in the trash. Not only is this unsustainable but extremely wasteful. We throw away so much food and we take it for granted. We dont realize how lucky we are to have food whenever we want. There are millions of homeless people in our world that rarely get food. This is the reason i am so glad she is doing what she is doing with her students.