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.

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…

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.

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!

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!

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.

Such ripples are rolling and rising into waves. I’ve received emails from from teachers and parents in MA, CT, NH, VT, NY, PA, VA, OH, MO, OR, CA, and HI who are interested in forming teams. If you’re from a state I haven’t listed, email me at tedwellscatablog@gmail.com and this list will grow!

Speaking of waves, our class video and interview on The TODAY SHOW helped CatalogChoice.org get 57,000 new members that one day. People opted out of over 300,000 catalogs that one day. “Catalog Choice” was the most searched term in the world on Google for over four hours … that one day. But that day is past and so many more lie ahead. In these coming days, what will you be doing to help the environment?

Hopefully you do many, many things. Perhaps our elementary school project will feed you with hope and convince many others that a clean, green, and sustainable future is possible … one day.

Below is a “behind the scenes” video about our TODAY SHOW experience.

We were thrilled by our TODAY SHOW experience and the chance to tell MILLIONS about our simple, yet powerful project! It is truly special to see how a dedicated group of kids can make this world a better place. Thank you so much Ann Curry!!

500 people an hour are visiting this blog since our interview four hours ago! We’re hopeful that many schools (or even colleges! or churches! or scout troops! or soccer teams! or book clubs! or … any group really) will be inspired to join this simple tree, water, energy, and climate saving contest. It could be an engaging, educational Earth ‘Day’ event for March or April, if you’re looking for one.

Referring to this friendly contest, Ann Curry ended by saying, The TODAY SHOW “may just pick the school that wins that Challenge AND PUT THEM ON TV!” Perhaps this will be your group?! And if not…we all win together, anyway.

We were also recently featured on CatalogChoice.org’s blog.

And on MeetTheGreens.org’s amazing website for kids.

The kids canceled 4,175 catalogs! Last Friday the kids counted out 167 piles of 25 during two recesses. They weighed each pile and found that we had 1,117 pounds of paper. Or 7.7 pounds canceled per child. If the 146 kids canceled 4,175 catalogs, some quick math tells us that’s 28.6 catalogs per child. This is the figure schools - large or small - can use to compete (in a friendly way) with each other. A small school could cancel only a few hundred catalogs, but have more catalogs canceled per child and therefore “win.”

Check out these detailed results for math activity ideas. If each of our 4,175 catalogs canceled doesn’t show up only four times in the next year or two, we will have saved 47 trees, 25,050 gallons of water, and the energy equivalent of taking 2.5 cars off the road! Not bad for a an elementary school!

But I keep wondering, “What if dozens of schools did this? Could we cancel 100,000 catalogs? Could we help planet Earth in her time of need?” And I nod and I say to myself, “I hope so!”

Click here or on the logo above to watch The Challenge’s kick-off slide show. You can use this at your school (or with your Girl Scout troop, or any group that wants to join our project), if you’d like. It’s all done and ready for you!

The kids are so into it. Canceling catalogs…such simple, real way to help save natural resources and energy. A way for anyone, young or not-so-young, to help the environment and to feel good about being part of the solution.

I’ll also post information from some other projects I’m involved in. For example, I filmed this BCAN (Boston Climate Action Network) sponsored Van Jones speech the other day. Also, the over 2,200 Step It Up rallies in 2007 were an important step in climate activism.

At my school, in my home, and as an concerned citizen, I’m someone who wants to do what I can to help the environment in its moment of need. I won’t be a bystander. I also want to help children (and their teachers) learn to value - and then care for - the natural world through concrete, hands-on environmental work and service learning. Take a look around this site to find out more. Maybe you can use some things here in your school.

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E. B. White

Contact email
tedwellscatablog@gmail.com