Change the Margins

4th Graders Take Margins to Beacon Hill

Just came across this fantastic article/radio story by Monica Brady-Myerov about a group of 4th graders in Boston who have taken up the Margins campaign.

MONICA BRADY-MYEROV: These 4th graders from the private Atrium School in Watertown are walking the halls of power on an environmental mission. They want to get everyone in the State House to change the margins when they print documents. The simplicity of the idea appeals to 10 year old Allie Reilinger.

ALLIE RELINGER: We heard about it and we thought it would be a good thing we could do and not that hard and we could really make a difference by doing it.

During their quest, the 4th graders spoke with aides to Governor Deval Patrick and Frank Simzik, who chairs the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture. According to the article, both were impressed with the students' facts and figures about how Margins can help the environment.

Between the kids in Sao Paolo and those at the Atrium school, I've realized that working with school children is a new tactic in the large-scale adoption of Efficient Margins. If kids start using Efficient Margins when they are small, they'll grow up with that as the norm. It's much easier to begin a habit when one is younger than it is to get people to change their habits when they are older.

Here's a link to a video the kids from the Atrium School made about the campaign!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_71mKrB7tDI

Facebook Update - Change the Margins in Brazil

I'm testing out a new blogging app on Facebook that's supposed to cross-post to a bunch of places, including twitter, my blog and my Facebook Newsfeed...we'll see how it goes.

Very cool news to report...a friend of mine is a teacher in Sao Paolo, Brazil and is using the Margins campaign as a teaching tool for her students. She had them prep questions for me and yesterday morning we did a Skype chat. Their English was great, and questions ranged from how I got the idea to how I thought they could implement it in their school. The only embarrassing thing is that they projected the video chat onto a very large screen so all the students could watch.

For the next month, they'll be doing a variety of activities surrounding Margins. I never realized my campaign could be used as a math lesson! I'm supposed to catch up with them in several weeks to find out how things are going. Hoping to learn a few Portuguese words by then to impress them with, as their English was fantastic.

Refuse the Receipt

As ya'll know, I'm a big fan of changing things one small step at a time. Here's another great grassroots idea from my friend Jeffrey Abramson, who runs the Gen Art Film Festival...

REFUSE THE RECEIPT!!!

"Refuse the Receipt" . . . what an unbelievable amount of paper is wasted and sent to the landfill when stores automatically print out receipts. I'm sure that 99.9% of receipts printed immediately get tossed in the trash. People should have to request receipts (like they should have to request a bag). It's ridiculous that some stores have policies that if they do not just give you a receipt you will get something for free!

So I encourage people to tell store clerks to not print a receipt . . .and if they have to - then refuse to take it - let them watch the receipts pile up in their own trash and maybe they will start to realize what a problem it is!