On Oct. 10, students at Maple Street Elementary School conducted a school waste audit, known as Trash On the Lawn Day. Northeast Resource Recovery Association educators Cindy Sterling and Heather Herring from NRRA’s School Recycling Club, trained 66 sixth-grade students how to identify and pull recyclables from school trash.
Outfitted with recyclable gloves, each group of students was given several bags of trash which were weighed, sorted into bins, then weighed again producing volume data for a final report. When sorting was completed the students had a visual and quantifiable record of how much of their “trash” could have been diverted from the landfill. While the students have a good recycling program in place, including a school garden with chickens, they saw opportunities to improve their efforts.
They were surprised by the amount of food waste they produced and that launched a discussion about composting. The students were instructed about the impact of recycling on natural resources and landfill space.