Ted Wells’ Catablog

Here’s a short 83 second promotional video for the “Catalog Canceling Challenge.” This summer I’m working to get the word out, so if you know any teachers, principles, superintendents, or even folks in the media who might be helpful and supportive of environmental education and service learning, please pass this video along to them in hopes growing our November 2008 Challenge! The Girl Scouts, Earth Day Network, MA Deptartment of Education, and others have been helpful in spreading the project, but let’s see what the internet can do. Please forward this new video on to others. Thanks!

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Watch highlights of Al Gore’s recent speech about our need to switch from fossil fuel based electricity production to green carbon free electricity (solar, wind, geothermal) in only 10 years. Note: He talked about carbon free “electricity,” not “energy” and therefore left out transportation and focused on buildings and industry mostly. (The media is missing this point.) This is our country’s next Apollo project! A huge leap for mankind.

While this is going on, we must also make huge steps in energy efficiency in our homes, offices, factories, schools, and overall economy. One such step: reforming the way many companies pitch their products via glossy sales catalogs - a dirty process that uses 61 million trees a year, 1.4 million homes worth of energy, while pluffing out 24 billion pounds of CO2 and heating up our planet…all to make catalogs that 98% of customers do not use.

To watch the full 27 minutes speech, click here.

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Be sure to read and spread the 350.org message over the next 18 months before the important Copenhagen climate agreement. Click here to view a recent Bill McKibben speech I filmed. He explains 350 best. Perhaps we can get 350 teams to cancel catalogs…

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I’m thrilled to welcome Girl Scouts of the USA to our project! According to their mission, “Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” By helping save trees, water, energy, and our climate when canceling catalogs, they are definitely helping make our world a better place because they are saving natural resources and slowing global warming.

Scroll down to watch some of our videos and to read success stories. To start a “Catalog Canceling Challenge” with your troop, visit our “Join the Catalog Canceling Challenge” page. It’s pretty simple, just cancel as many unwanted sales catalogs as you can! Let’s see which troop can cancel the most catalogs! Be sure to email in your results after 30 days - the number of catalogs canceled, number of Girl Scouts, Troop Number, location, and a photo of your pile - to tedwellscatablog@gmail.com.

Troop leader Marni Suliin reports that six Girl Scouts from Troop 315 in Iron River, Michigan (above) put a box in their school to collect catalogs for one week. Then they canceled the 150 catalogs in only two hours using www.CatalogChoice.org! Great work Troop 315!

Check out our results page, we’ve canceled 9,000 catalogs saving 120 trees and 100,000 gallons of water! We’ve prevented the emissions of 13,000 pounds of CO2 which is equal to taking over four cars off the road.

And be sure to view my 4th grade class video.

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I love how the Hutchison Farm Elementary School in South Riding, Virgina displays their canceled catalogs in reused copy paper boxes! If you’d like to download “100s” posters like theirs, click here.

272 Hutchison Huskies canceled 1,710 catalogs! Teacher Caroline Kuhfahl asked me if we’ll be having this “Challenge” again next year. YES! This year is the test drive. Next November we’re hoping to get hundreds of schools, community centers, scout troops, etc. to join in. So please spread the word and get ready for a November 1, 2008 start. Or cancel a pile this summer! (A dream of mine is to one day get 1,000 groups to cancel 1,000 catalogs each … or … drum role … 1 MILLION catalogs canceled, saving 10,000 trees, lakes of water, and heaps of energy which will all help slow global warming.)

To the left is a cool graph the Hutchison kids were using to chart their progress as they worked towards their goal of 1,600 catalogs. Work it Huskies!!

Our total so far: 4,125 (Park) + 625 (St.Leo) + 2,300 (Eliot) + 1,652 (Hutchison) = 8,702 kid canceled catalogs!

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Lindsay Sheperd - a 2nd grade teacher in Winston-Salem, North Carolina - writes, “This is a fabulous project that can reach across the curriculum to teach environmental issues, responsibility and citizenship, and math. Our 2nd grade class at St. Leo School canceled 625 catalogs over the past two months. I am proud of the initiative and motivation my 28 2nd graders had in tackling this project.” Here are four of her students standing proudly over their pile!

Several hundred Kindergarten through Grade Five students at The The John Eliot School in Needham, MA canceled 2,300 catalogs in in only fourteen days!! See their pile in the photo below, or click here to see a slide show about their efforts. Thank you Seta Nersessian! And I hear that The Newman School in Needham has started a Catalog Challenge, too! Go Needham!

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After researching facts on-line about the negative ecological and health impacts of car idling pollution, the 4th grade made a bulletin board for the school: “American Idol is Okay, BUT Americans Idling Their Cars Is Not!” (Thanks to Chloë for the great title!)

Next, we thought it was time to tell the world. The day before Spring Break, 12 teams of 4th graders had 30 minutes each to come up with a short commercial encouraging others to idle/pollute less. We pretended that they would be shown during the next Super Bowl! We will share the full length video at our school’s Earth Day assembly in two weeks.

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Here’s a great video about WHY we should do any of this hard work to help the environment. Why recycle? Why cancel catalogs? Why be Green? WHY? This is why:

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