Bloomfield Township, Michigan teacher Pauline Roberts wrote a post for TreeHugger detailing her students’ challenge to lessen waste at their school as part of the Siemens We Can Change the World sustainability challenge.
Participating students found that each day during lunch, enough waste was being generated to fill 18 trash cans. If stacked on top of each other, the number of cans the school was filling per year would be five times taller than the Empire State Building.
In search of more specific data on their waste, the kids separated trash into piles and studied what was being tossed. They identfied Styrofoam lunch trays as the main culprit and called the school’s head of food services alert them of their findings. The single-use trays were soon replaced with reusable baskets which reduced cafeteria waste by a third.
The kids also oversaw the installation of three recycling stations where they took turns “manning the cans” to educate their fellow student body about the difference between waste and recyclables. Despite being teased for their pursuits, the kids supplemented the traditional poster and word-of-mouth campaign with a production of Ebenezer Scourge, a show about a boy who refused to recycle.
For proving that environmental change comes from education and a commitment to lifestyle changes, these kids get gold stars.
