In The News: Recycling program sweeping through JAES

Fifth-grade students have decreased garbage from lunch and breakfast by 84 percent through recycling, composting and menu changes

Out of sight, out of mind.

When it comes to garbage, that kind of mentality can result in a lot of waste and inefficiency.

If you start really keeping track, the sheer volume of refuse can quickly become both staggering and sobering.

But just as importantly, making simple changes can result in reductions that are just as eye-opening and uplifting.

That lesson has been hammered home for everybody — students, teachers and staff — at Joan Austin Elementary School this spring, thanks to a student-led recycling and composting program introduced by fifth-grade teacher Stephanie Sayles.

Through a combination of recycling, composting and changing habits, the program has reduced the amount of garbage produced by the school’s breakfast and lunch periods by 84 percent.

“It’s really cool,” Sayles said. “The whole school is now trained on where to put their stuff. Lori (Britton), our custodian, is just so happy.”

Perhaps the single biggest change has been the recycling of milk cartons. The milk cartons are now emptied, collected separately, rinsed and placed in crates to dry overnight.

“We have a good 10 gallons, if not more, of milk that the kids don’t drink,” Sayles said. “That is being put down the drain instead of out into the garbage where it attracts maggots. It was just gross. The bags would get poked with straws and sporks and drain out. It was heavy. We’re all just amazed at the reduction.”

Composting is another major part of the program, diverting a significant portion of the food waste away from the waste stream and into the school’s industrial-sized composter or earth tub.

The school began composting a few years ago, but the program fell off last year; Sayles, a lifelong composter, got the ball rolling again. That included teaching a section on composting, complete with an experiment contrasting decomposition in a worm bin versus an earth tub.

Sayles and students also worked with cafeteria staff to make changes to the menu, eliminating or reducing options that children weren’t eating, or changing practices, like eliminating straws and plastic utensils in favor of silverware that can be washed.

“The kitchen crew and her kids and her are always working together to figure out how can we do this better, what do we need to do?” principal Terry McElligott said. “I think that’s really what makes it work instead of someone coming in and saying, ‘No, we have to recycle everything.’ If you have a kitchen crew that isn’t a part of the process or you don’t have the custodian in the process, it isn’t successful.”

All combined, the amount of garbage produced from breakfast and lunch each day has been reduced from 12 33-gallon bags to two. But just as importantly, the whole program is run by the school’s three fifth grade classes, who rotate on shifts to oversee the new partitioned waste/recycling stations and take out the resulting garbage, milk cartons and compost.

“She got the fifth graders to learn the system and they help at lunch time and a lot of them that help at our breakfast time, too, just making sure they’re teaching the younger kids how it’s supposed to be done,” McElligott said. “I also noticed that it’s much more calm in there because they’re taking ownership of the stuff that’s going on in there and they understand how much stuff we’re not taking to the landfill.”

In addition to the amount of physical waste that has been eliminated at the school, the potential impact of kids learning these lessons and reinforcing good habits at such a young age could result in even greater reductions moving forward over the course of their lives.

“You should see how many of them say, ‘We’ve got a recycling bin at home,’ or “We compost at home now,’” Sayles said. “It’s powerful.”

Britton, for one, has been both pleasantly surprised by and thankful for the student’s efforts.

“I’m really impressed with what they do,” Britton said. “They clean up. They do most of it. I just kind of help supervise and do some of it. They do a great job and they’re excited about it. It’s a great life skill for them to have, a good habit to get into.”

Written by: Seth Gordon