By Gretchen Carey, Bedford DPW,
Over the past month, John Glenn Middle School has been running a contest, encouraging students to use their artistic talents to create an environmentally friendly logo for the school. The logo will be emblazoned on reusable water bottles supplied by the Department of Public Works, with the goal of encouraging students and staff to save plastic by refilling the reusable bottle, rather than disposing of individual water bottles each day.
This collaboration was born when JGMS teachers Barbara Ferri and Heidi Scaltreto invited Recycling Coordinator Gretchen Carey to an assembly at the school earlier in the year. The assembly was given by the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) and it talked about each student “doing one thing” to help the environment. Carey, who works for the DPW, had already planned to give each student a water bottle. Listening to the message of personal involvement imparted by the assembly, Carey decided to increase student participation by holding a contest to create the logo on the bottle.
Ferri and Scaltreto took this participation one step further. After collecting all the artistic submissions, the student members of the ACE club selected the top three designs. The JGMS student body then voted online to determine the winning logo. This logo, submitted by Leslie, shows the familiar chasing arrows of the recycling symbol with a nature scene, complete with pine trees and a stylized sun. The letters “JGMS” are at each corner of the artwork. There is a space for the student’s name.
Each bottle is Bisphenol-A free, made of recycled plastic, and top-shelf dishwasher safe. All three finalists were awarded gift certificates from the Used Book Superstore in Burlington.
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Now if the DPW would finish cleaning up the water and getting rid of the coliform we could go back to drinking Bedford water without boiling it or simply buying bottled water.