PROJECT #1: How to Ban Plastic Bags in Your Community
PROJECT #2: Girl Scout CFL Light Bulb Give-Away

PROJECT #1: How to Ban Plastic Bags in Your Community

High-school students successfully campaigned to ban plastic bags in their city of Santa Monica. This was one of the first cities that banned plastic bags in the United States. The entire country of China has banned plastic bags, thereby saving China hundreds of thousands of gallons of fossil fuel and preventing thousands of tons of global warming gas from entering the atmosphere.

Here’s How You Can Ban Plastic Bags in Your Community:

1. Show the Team Marine video to your teacher or school principal.

2. Start a Team Marine at your school and get a mentor.

3. Create a website for the new group you want to create and create a facebook page for it. Put the Young Voices movie trailer on your website. Send out the URL for your website to the kids in your school and community.

4. Ask your principal or teacher if you can put on an assembly. Do a school assembly explaining how plastic bags use fossil fuel and how much CO2 can be prevented from going into the atmosphere through a plastic bag ban.

5. After the assembly ask any students who are interested in helping to get a ban on plastic bags to stay and dress up as a plastic bag monster.

6. With a scientist or teacher, do a study like Yassi and Evelina did on the impact of plastic bags on ecosystems. Bring the study to the local media—TV, newspapers and do a BLOG. Count and document (photography with a digital camera) the number of bags on the trees along your local river. Find out how many bags are thrown away each day. Call your local waste management company. Find out the cost how much # could you save by reducing garbage.

7. Visit local politicians and get them to introduce a resolution to ban plastic bags in your community, town, city or state.

8. Bring data and testisfy at town hall meetings as a plastic bag monster and bottlecap monster.

9. Publicize and hold rallies with posters and make sure there’s a plastic bag monster and a bottlecap monster –media: contact local media.

10. Once you win a ban on plastic bags, follow through and make sure it’s implemented making frequent visits and calls to your local politicians and PUBLICIZE YOUR SUCCESS AND WHY THE BAN IS IMPORTANT to you as a young person inheriting this Earth.

Bring to the assembly:

1. AND PLAY the TEAM MARINE DVD

2. Clipboards so students who want to create a Team Marine at their school can sign up

3. Info sheets with the website URL

4. Press Release: We at ____________ school want to try to ban plastic bags in because plastic bags:
1. Affect global warming because they are made of fossil fuel
2. End up in the oceans where they are eaten by birds, mammals and it kills millions of them /​ year
3. Litter waterways and roadways
4. Are not biodegradable—they stay around forever.

 

PROJECT #2: Girl Scout CFL Light Bulb Give-Away

In 2009 Girl scouts in San Francisco gave away 5000 CFL light bulbs to raise awareness about energy conservation and to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint in order to abate global warming. By half a million people changing just one of their light bulbs to compact fluorescents, tons of CO2 were prevented from going into the atmosphere. If everyone in the US changed from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs, many tons of CO2 would be prevented from going into the atmosphere.

Here’s how you can do what they did in ten easy steps:

1. Join your local Girl Scout troop;
2. Show the troop the Young Voices for the Planet Girl Scouts video.
3. Find a mentor. Find a parent, teacher or Girl Scout leader to help you organize a CFL or LED giveaway.
4. Create a CFL giveaway page for your website. Write up a project description like the one below:

In 2009 Girl scouts in the San Francisco Bay area gave away 5000 compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs to raise awareness about energy conservation and give people an opportunity to do something about global climate change by reducing their carbon footprint The Sierra Club procured the bulbs from the utility PG&E and the girls went door to door giving out the bulbs and a booklet educating people about how to save energy and produce less global warming gases.

We girl scouts in _________ (your town) want to do what the San Francisco girl scouts did in order to show people that we can all do something about climate change. Can you be a sponsor and help stop global warming? We kids are going to have to live in a warmer world. Please help us keep the earth cool enough that we can continue to survive here.

5. Find partners: go to local businesses that sell DVDs or LEDs and ask them to donate light bulbs for your giveaway.
6. Call local and environmental group sand ask if they will help you buy light bulbs.
7. Publicity: call local newspapers: radio stations and local TV news tell them about your light bulb giveaway. Ask them to join you on the day you go distribute door to door giving away light bulbs.
8. Write a press release.

Sample Press Release:
The girl scouts of troop #_____ will be giving away ____ # of CFLs – compact fluorescent light bulbs on ______. Please come with us and tell others in ______________ (your community) how we Girl Scouts are helping to stop global warming.

9. Follow-up: e-mail press releases to the media with phone calls asking them to feature you on their news. Then go door to door with as many girl scouts as you can muster.
10. Follow up: Have a few girl scouts stay and interview recipients of the light bulb giveaway.

Ask the people who you gave the bulbs to for comments:
Did the light bulb giveaway remind them about what they can do t reduce their carbon footprint?
Do they think they’ll be more likely to conserve energy in the future?
Would they be willing to use less energy? Drive less? Fly less? Better insulate their houses? Use air conditioning less? Keep the heat down?