The Catalog Canceling Challenge

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.

Use this website to start a “Catalog Canceling Challenge” with your troop. It’s pretty simple, just cancel as many unwanted sales catalogs as you can! Let’s see which troop can cancel the most catalogs per Girl Scout! 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!

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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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The day we were on TV, one of my student’s moms emailed 200 friends about CatalogChoice.org and 80 of them opted out of 2,000 catalogs and emailed all of their friends to do the same. One mom. One day. She’s even getting her son’s soccer team to join our Catalog Canceling Challenge. Another parent in my school is starting a team with many families on his street.

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.

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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.

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Ann Curry of NBC’s TODAY SHOW found out about our little catalog canceling project and loves it!! She’s going to show part of our movie (below) then interview our class live on Thursday, January 24 between 7:30-8:00AM!!! I’m not joking - this is real. The kids are thrilled and I’m still pinching myself…

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

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

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