Hello!  

Welcome back-to-school! Great to see many of you at all-staff meetings this month! Below is our monthly e-news (the 1st one of this 2016-2017 school year)!

Did you know?

Last year CPS kept more than 167,000 pounds of food scraps out of the landfill/incinerator! These composting efforts prevented new greenhouse gases from being made, and prevented 22 truckloads of trash from being generated! Wow, and thank you so much for composting at lunch time in your cafeterias.

Also last year, CPS recycled 347 tons of empty containers, paper, and cardboard. YOUR EFFORTS TO RECYCLE saved:
• 5,312 trees
• 694 barrels of oil
• 2.4 million gallons of water
• and 46 truckloads of trash.
• Finally, these efforts prevented 520 tons of carbon dioxide from being released.

AWESOME! Thank you for keeping a blue recycling bin in your classroom and office. Need one? Contact your custodian or e-mail Meryl: [email protected].

Remember, CPSD Sustainability is online.

Teachers and staff – thank you so much for all you do to care for our students & schools. Have a great year.

Kristen Middleton
[email protected], 617.349.6856

Have a Guest from the Recycling Division
Meryl Brott, DPW Recycling Program Manager, would love to come to your class to share about recycling and/or composting. To schedule a visit, email [email protected]. Says Gena Rosenberg, First Grade Teacher, Morse School: “Thank you so much for coming in today! The kids really enjoyed it and are very excited about recycling! After you left the kids started making signs to encourage others to recycle!”

Help Kids Compost
Love kids? Love composting? Volunteer, a little or a lot, to remind students "what goes where" and why we compost and recycle. Breakfast shifts are ~7:30am – 8:30am and lunch shifts are ~11:00am-1:15pm. You can help the continued success of the school composting programs! Please email [email protected] to learn more and join the team.



Fresh Pond Updates
We're kicking off Kids Walks every Friday this month starting after Labor Day! Kids walks are casual nature explorations designed for young kids and their parents/caretakers, and play in our urban wild! Meets at the gazebo at Neville Place, 650 Concord Ave.

Our 4th annual watershed bike tour, Cycle to the Source, is coming up on October 1st! This guided day-long bike tour starts at the purification facility and visits the watershed lands and reservoirs in Lincoln, Lexington, Weston, and Waltham. Adults only, please! Visit our website for more information and check out the registration form. Check out photos from last year's tour, and please pass on this announcement to any water + bicycle enthusiast friends!

Woodland Restoration Area Gardening: Tuesdays, 9:30AM-1PM. Join other stewardship-minded volunteers in caretaking the native plant restoration area next to Lusitania Meadow, and learn all about the diversity of native plant life! Drop in and lend a hand with watering new plantings, making rabbit cages, pruning, weeding, and other gardening tasks. E-mail [email protected] for more information.

Fun Butterfly Activity with Ranger Jean 
September 24 | 2PM
Maynard Ecology Center, 650 Concord Ave.
Come explore the world of "things with wings” that live in our city and help our Cambridge Wildlife Puppets get ready for the Honk! parade on October 9th. Ongoing activities include face painting and paper plate mask-making for wee ones and building dragonfly headgear or creating feathers for our oversized bird puppets for elementary-aged kids. At 2:30 we’ll learn about bats from a bat expert. From 2:00 to 2:30 and also from 3:00 to 3:30, a guest artist will guide adult/child pairs in creating three Little Brown Bats for Honk! Learn from Ranger Jean about flying creatures and why they make their home at Fresh Pond, and look for butterflies, dragonflies, and things with wings at the Neville Butterfly Meadow. This is an all-ages event. All children under 12 must be accompanied.



Transportation Benefits
The central idea of this workshop is to help employees understand the transportation benefits offered to them by the City of Cambridge. This workshop sheds light on our commutes and hopes to decrease the stress we often have during rush hour. This workshop will help you to get to work without driving alone! Please attend one of the next workshops. Highlights: understand the sustainable transportation benefits offered, identify new ways to get to work without driving alone, and search for benefits in the Employee Commute Manual.

Mon., Sept. 26, 10-10:30AM, 5 Western Ave
Tue., Oct. 11, 12-12:30PM, 125 6th Street
Tue., Oct. 11, 3-3:30PM, Location TBD

RSVP to Tareque: [email protected]



2016 Climate Change Congress
Seeks Delegates
Mayor E. Denise Simmons and City Councillor Jan Devereux will convene the 2016 Cambridge Climate Congress on October 1st at Cambridge City Hall. The theme of the congress is “Building a Community of Response to Climate Change”. The congress will gather 100 volunteer delegates from across the city to make practical recommendations on how all residents can participate in responding to climate change. Anyone who is interested in being a delegate, helping organize the congress, or giving feedback, should contact Green Cambridge at [email protected] or find info online.  



Fall Paper Shred Day
All paper gets recycled after it is shredded!
October 22 | 10AM-2PM
Are you ready to safely part with some of your ever growing paper pile? Bring your bags to Central Square, in front of City Hall, at 795 Mass. Ave. Presented by Cambridge Hoarding Coalition, Cambridge Council on Aging, Department of Public Works and Cambridge Consumers’ Council. Cambridge residents only. For more info, go online or call 617.349.6150.