The 7th grade Sustainable Pathways project seeks to reduce our schoolwide carbon footprint by recycling disposable materials that have previously gone to the landfill. We have selected two waste streams to work on: plastic lunch waste and shoes.
Project A: Plastic lunch waste - Every day at school, but particularly in Family Group, WOW, and Field Trips, we produce large amounts of plastic waste from juice bags and chip bags. We estimate that in Family Groups alone, from September 2009 to November 2011 we sent 19,212 chip bags and 19,212 juice bags to the landfill, where they will take hundreds or perhaps thousands of years to break down. We have implemented a schoolwide system to collect these items for shipment to Terracycle, a company that will turn these plastics into new products for sale such as pencil bags, backpacks, binders, holiday stockings & tree skirts, placemats, CD/DVD cases, and more, thereby reducing demand for petroleum production to make new plastic. We estimate that we will recycle at least 6,500 juice bags and 6,500 chip bags this school year alone. And because we are supplying Terracycle with raw materials for production, they will donate a portion of their profits to a charity of our choice.
Our next steps are...
#1 7th grade students will select a handful of possible charities and then hold a vote among the K-8 student body.
#2 Convert "chip bag" and "juice bag" units into units of weight (pounds) in order to determine how many pounds we are recycling and find an equivalent weight to compare that to. Have we recycled an elephant's weight in chip bags? A dump truck's weight in juice bags?
Project B: Shoes - Although they last longer than cans, wrappers, etc., shoes do have a limited lifespan and typically end up in the landfill. The production and shipment of shoes has an environmental impact and a human impact, both of which we are studying. We intend to encourage our community to buy, use, and dispose of shoes responsibly. We also intend to communicate with Salt Lake area charities and thrift stores to find out what they do with donated shoes that are not usable. Do they throw them away? Or do they recycle them through a program such as Nike Reuse-a-Shoe. We are seeking ways to divert shoes that would otherwise go to the landfill and get them to Nike Reuse-a-Shoe.
Our next steps are..
#1 Finalize shoe surveys to determine our school-wide "Shoe Print." Possible questions to address... How many shoes do we have? How many of those shoes do we regularly use? Where were they made? What do we do with them after they are worn out or outgrown?
#2 Call local charity/thrift stores: D.I., Savers, Salvation Army, etc., to find out if they throw away or recycle unusable/unsellable shoes. Determine if we can somehow help them make it worthwhile to recycle instead of throw shoes away.
