Three Girl Scout cadettes from Troop 70217 completed “Going Green in Our Daily Lives,” a year-long Silver award project. Ria Mittal, a freshman at High School North, and Pia Rizzo-Wittlin and Anisha Amurthur, both freshmen at High School South, are now Senior Girl Scouts.
Their main hope is to have reached out and encouraged young children from ages 8 to 11 to maintain an “earth first” philosophy in all they do on a daily basis. “This impressionable age is our best hope for preventing further damage and maintaining the ecologic health and well-being of future planet earth and its inhabitants” says Rizzo-Wittlin.
In a three-part series of library workshops, each cadette addressed a different aspect of “Going Green.” Anisha Amurthur presented “Recycling Paper and Plastics,” a slide presentation. Her guest speaker, West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, shared information about being eco-friendly. Amurthur also presented two videos about recycling and finished with an interactive game for the children to reinforce what they had just learned.
The second workshop organized by Pia Rizzo-Wittlin created earth-friendly greeting cards and envelopes. With numerous examples to choose from on a trifold poster, with a little imagination and vast array of miscellaneous items commonly found in any home, birthday, holiday, get well, and thank you notes were created by the children. Upon completion, each child was given an earth friendly theme patch and a brand new decorative box to take home to store reusable paper and notions for future card making.
The third workshop, organized by Ria Mittal, centered on learning how to read food labels, making wiser food choices, and eating more healthfully by choosing organic food, fruits, and vegetables. Mittal encouraged the support of local farmers and buying from farmers’ markets, using less fuel to deliver fruits and vegetables to our supermarkets.
When not involved in Girl Scout related activities, Amurthur plays violin for the High School Orchestra and studies Indian music. She is a member of the WW-P Girl Scouts FTC Robotics Team. Mittal is also a member of the robotics team. Rizzo-Wittlin plays for the High School South freshman soccer team.
“There are many grassroots efforts as well as large global corporations trying to raise ecologic mindfulness, but there are still significant number of inhabitants and corporations that are either oblivious or simply rejecting the idea of global warming and pollution as very real and damaging to the earth,” says Mittal.
“Our disposable society, gas fueled vehicle emissions, traditionally heated/cooled homes, methane gas production from cattle processing and oil spills in oceans significantly contribute to global warming,” says Amurthur.
“Melting ice caps will change the face of our map forever and arctic animals are facing extinction. Why do you think the Coca Cola Company advertises partnering with environmental groups? It needs the consumer to buy more Coke to raise funds to save the polar bear,” says Rizzo-Wittlin.
As a group effort, the “Go Green” theme was illuminated on the wall-sized West Windsor Library bulletin board. Constructed of only recycled materials, they educated their target audience over an extended three-month period. They also created a “Go Green” website at gogreen4good.wordpress.com, distributed green bookmarks for library patron use, and weeded the library garden.
The girls’ proudest achievement has been the creation of an original “Go Green” logo made into an adhesive label. Their collective task was to catalogue books from juvenile and young adult meeting “green” criteria and labels these books with the original adhesive logo they created. Their creation of a publicly recognizable logo made into a book label that the library would accept would set a new library standard by which to catalogue and display environmental or “Go Green” material, now and into the future.
The group’s advisor was Tracy Walters of Plainsboro. The group’s mentor was Carolyn Aversano, a librarian at the West Windsor Library. The troop leader was Helen Rancan.
