With the arrival of the new year and our spring composting project launch just around the corner, it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work! As a quick recap: as our spring project, the Green Team is aiming to launch composting in the Grades 3-5 classrooms during snack-time. Composting is a great way to divert students' food scraps from our waste stream (and preventing the subsequent production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas), and to convert them into valuable, natural fertilizer that can then be added to the school garden. Participation in a composting program can also increase students' environmental awareness, and empower students to take positive environmental action.
As a first step, we wanted to make sure we all understood what snack time looks like right now, what kinds of snacks are eaten (and trash produced), how the recycling bins are used, and how they are emptied. The Green Team Kids helped us answer these questions based on each of their own experiences in their respective classrooms.
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| Green Team Kids discussing their school snack routines |
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| We recorded the comments, observations and issues that were raised. |
Some of the highlights from our discussion:
- Snack waste/trash generally goes in the trash (recycling bins in the classrooms appears to be limited to paper) [Not great]
- Most common snacks include bagged chips and bars, which results in lots of wrappers that go in the trash [Not great]
- Most students have reusable water bottles [Great!]
- There appears to some confusion/contamination with the recycling bins (un-recyclable wrappers may sometimes end up in recycling bins; paper ends up in trash) [Not great]
- Grades 3-5 classrooms will generally have a classroom job that involves emptying out the classroom (paper) recycling bin into one of the big recycling carts in the hallways [Great!]
Our vision for the spring project would include classroom collection of not only compost (e.g. apple cores, banana peels), but also recyclables (per Newton's recycling program), and "stretchy plastic" (e.g. sandwich bags, plastic wrap). This would potentially involve additional containers and a commitment within each classroom to a new snack routine. Do the classrooms even have an appropriate physical space for these additional containers? Do we have enough recycling carts within the school, or would we need more? The Green Team Kids split into three groups and set out to get the answers to these threshold questions.
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| We went from classroom to classroom to look at the trash/recycling bins and to evaluate the space for additional compost/ recyclables containers. |
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| Each team took on a different piece of the school, and recorded its observations to share with the larger group. |
Thanks to our Green Team Kids, we have a good inventory of Mason-Rice's recycling bins, carts and classroom space. We'll be analyzing and using this information as we begin to design a path towards zero-/reduced waste in Mason-Rice classrooms.
As a reminder to all parents of Green Team Kids, here are our remaining meeting dates for the school year: 1/25, 2/8, 3/1, 3/15, 3/29, 4/5, 4/26, 5/10, 5/17, 5/31, 6/7
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