“Waste is a design flaw.”
Our schools are graduating prolific consumers. They are so incredibly efficient at designing productive days and traffic flow patterns to reduce hallway congestion. Schools get hundreds to thousands of people through lunch within a few hours of the day. There is so much about schools that is right! But in general, a school’s waste management policy seems to be designed to most efficiently rid ourselves of the trash without a second thought of the impact that it has on the environment or what subtle lessons this teaches our students. Each American student produces an average of ½ pound of waste per day at school alone. (That’s 2700 pounds of trash per classroom per school year.) After 13 years of doing so without second thought, they leave our schools as wasteful consumers of resources.
I’ve worked as a teacher, a volunteer and a supportive parent in our local public school system for almost 20 years and I’ve never gotten the impression that waste reduction was ever a district priority nor has this been emphasized as a valued goal of the education we offer our students. In an effort to learn more to prepare for this post, I checked out our local district’s website. There is no mention of environmental education in our mission statement, in our stated values or in our ‘profile of a graduate’ statement. I had to search within the website to find any mention of environmentally conscious news and most of what I found were posts about actions individual schools were taking. As I dug deeper, I saw mention of environmental programs that the website has listed, but with the exception of the ‘Feed the Bin’ program, I’ve never seen the others implemented. As the science supports the idea that recycling is just one step better than trashing a used item, this recycling program is literally the lowest level of intervention that can be implemented. But it’s well established, it’s easy enough to manage, it’s comfortable.
It’s not good enough.
Waste is a design flaw. Consider that as you design your classroom for the upcoming school year (whether in person or online). If sustainability practices are taught as expected behaviors, in a similar way that we teach students to put their cellphones on silent, raise their hand before speaking and to write their first and last names on every paper they turn in, then every subject, every teacher, every grade level and every school can play an important role in waste reduction. And the reasons why we should are mounting!
Through research I’ve identified the 3 main culprits of school waste (the percentages listed below refer to it’s relative presence discovered during a school waste audit of California schools).
-single-use plastics (12.7%)
-paper (31.4%)
-food waste (50.8%-listed as organics on website and includes plant waste as well)
I argue that the best way to tackle this waste problem is through a top-down approach, where district-wide sustainability priorities are put in place, are funded, experts are hired and personnel are trained. But I will simultaneously argue that we cannot wait for big, slow bureaucracies to change while we sit tight and wait. A bottom-up approach can have incredible, albeit, local impacts.
Plastics in Schools
Plastics are most often used as disposable items although generated from permanent materials. Plastics in our environment don’t breakdown and go away as much as they break up into smaller and smaller bits. That actually sounds great! They get so small we don’t even see the small bits any longer. But we know now that they end up in our food chains. Today, the question scientists face in regard to plastics in the environment is not IF plastics end up in a child’s school lunch, but HOW HARMFUL is it because it’s already there. One third of fish consumed by humans has plastic embedded in its tissues and blood stream due to the nearly 270,000 tons of plastic floating in our oceans. How does it get there? Litter of course, spills from trash barges, storms washing waves onto city streets and inside buildings. Frankly, it wouldn’t be there at all if we didn’t use and dispose of plastic so ubiquitously.
Consider your own use of plastic in your classroom. Do you need it? Can you use less? Can it be reused? Can it be recycled? Can you use it more efficiently? Is the 15 minutes of average use of plastic worth the 300 years of toxic waste on our planet?
Paper in Schools
Paper represents approximately 30-40% of waste in a school. The paper produced in the United States alone (in 2013) required the use of between 55-110 million trees. Just that year! And only around 53% of our paper is ever recycled.
The environmental impacts of paper use include deforestation causing habitat loss and soil erosion into waterways, both of which contribute to the mass extinction of species we are presently witnessing here on Earth. The chlorine used to bleach paper is toxic and pulp mills rank as the 3rd most polluting industry, affecting soils, waterways and our air.
How many times in 20 years of teaching have I asked students to “Get out a clean sheet of paper.” Again, do you need it? Can you use less? Can it be reused? Can it be recycled? Can you use it more efficiently?
Food Waste in Schools
This might be the most challenging problem to solve with a bottom-up approach, but we have to start somewhere, even if that somewhere is just awareness of the problem. Waste audits at various schools have been conducted and the statistics are jaw-dropping. Food waste accounts for nearly 24% of waste generated in schools. A lot of that food being trashed but not eaten is actually paid for with tax dollars with an estimated value of $1.2 billion in food waste by schools each school year. What are we implicitly saying to students when we allow and even encourage them to toss uneaten food? In a society where so many are food insecure, this problem is untenable.
Between food and paper, composting could be one solution to our schools’ waste stream. It is estimated that nearly 63% of a school’s waste could be composted, while another 28% could be recycled. If schools perfectly implemented recycling and composting programs, 91% of school waste would be diverted from landfills. That’s 91% of the approximate 484,000 pounds of trash generated by an average sized school system during one school year. And we wouldn’t even have to do this perfectly for there to be big impacts!
If we taught our students to mindfully consider the waste they generate and how to handle their waste production and disposal more sustainably we would graduate students who are equipped to handle the environmental problems our planet faces in this 21st century.
A Personal Reflection
My boys are 12 and 11-years-old and will enter the 7th and 5th grades this school year. It is their adult selves and their children (my grandchildren) who will truly have to suffer through the ramifications of our toxic Earth, deplete of abundant and clean natural resources while living through the challenges of climate change.
Predictions have been extrapolated. In 2050, when my boys are 43 and 42 years old, cities in the northern hemisphere will have climates more similar to the present climates of cities 600 miles south of us. Seattle will feel more like San Francisco. New York City more like Virginia Beach and Charlotte will be more like Memphis. Food systems will be in jeopardy and water shortages will be all too real. These consequences are a direct result of the energy we use to create disposable products, trash them and gather and remove that waste among other emissions of carbon.
Teachers are busy. Schools are overwhelmed. A pandemic looms large. Somedays it feels like the odds are against us! That’s when I return to my breath, my present moment and the immediate decisions before me. I start here, I stay here and I plug away at the problem bit by bit. I am also grateful for the organizations and people who are already creating solutions for these problems! (see list below)
I ask that you do the same. Stay present, think small to start and let habits develop and improve; remain grateful for what is already in place and let’s design lower waste classrooms! Let’s start today!
To learn more visit:
Green Schools National Network “Leading the movement in creating green, healthy, sustainable K-12 schools.”
The Story of Stuff Project: “A community minded, solutions focused, action oriented organization.”
Center for Ecoliteracy “Dedicated for cultivating education for sustainable living.”
And visit June’s post Your Little Bit of Good and July’s post Your Waste-less Classroom for practical ways to implement waste reduction practices at home and at school.