Waste’s “Days” Are Numbered

There is a little known organization in the State of Oregon going around encouraging our students to dig through their own trash. Can you believe it? I certainly can.

The Oregon Green School Association ( http://www.oregongreenschools.org/ ) works with local waste reduction professionals such as myself to work with schools, educators, and students develop a greater understanding of how their behaviors impact local environments and economies. This is done through a membership process that requires the applicants to monitor, measure, and analyze their energy consumption and waste generation. Armed with this data, the schools, staff, and students develop new systems to employ to save the school money and protect our natural resources. Once complete, the school becomes certified as an “Oregon Green School” and the students get to attend an annual education summit for free and apply for small grants to help them with their programs.

Currently only Hucrest Elementary is certified in our area. Roseburg High School, Highland Elementary in Reedsport, and Eastwood Elementary are all in various stages of implementation here in Douglas County.

Most recently, Days Creek Charter School has accepted the challenge to tackle the greening of their school. Teacher Janis Davis created a club in the school recently, called the “Green Team”. This group of students is made up of teens from all segments of the school and each and every one of them has a true interest in fostering sustainability with their peers and educators. So far, they have presented recycling education at local community events, expanded their school recycling program to include all paper, beverage containers, cardboard, and metal. They themselves coordinate the collection of this material and partner with Sunrise Enterprises for local pick up from a school out building that has been recently given to them.

This week in the cold December morning air, eight students and their teacher braved the chill and joined me in a waste audit. This is an essential element to their application process for consideration to be a “Green School”. You cannot know how your efforts are to be measured; with our first measuring the waste you are going to tackle.

The custodial staff at Days Creek was kind enough to collect one day’s waste from the school and deliver it behind the gym. There, hands covered in protective gloves, and after learning about safety, they dove right in to the task at hand; sifting through the pile and sorting the material into base materials. The teens were measuring by weight what would have been clean paper for recycling, plastic, metal, glass, food and food contaminated paper waste suitable for composting, and actual garbage.

Normally the process takes many hours considering the volume and the nature of the task. However, these kids are different. They want to do this. They want to make a difference. We completed the exercise in only 1 hour and 40 minutes, including clean up.

What they discovered may or may not surprise you. 200 pounds of waste was gathered, which did not include an unknown amount of slop that was not contained with in bags. Of these 200 pounds, only 21 pounds was deemed to be actual waste. That is only 10%! The rest was all recyclable or Compostable.

They only separated out 12.5 pounds of paper. This is because most of the paper is already diverted via current recycling programs. 32.2 pounds of plastic cups, silverware, lids, cereal bowls, and bags were collected or 16%. Only 2 pounds each of metal and glass was discovered considering most beverage containers and cans from the kitchen are already collected separately for recycling as well. And one pound of electronic waste was found.

Most revealing from the event was the discovery of 131.3 pounds of food and food contaminated paper. 65% of the school’s waste was determined to be compostable and perfectly suitable to enrich the surrounding area instead of filling the dump.

Armed with this knowledge the students plan educating fellow students, school leadership, and the community about our responsibility to be good stewards of our natural resources. In this way, they plan on building a greener school in hopes that their efforts will foster sustainability outside the hallowed halls of Days Creek Charter and into the homes and businesses of Douglas County and beyond.

Pictured:
Janis Davis , Ranis Chapman , Joe Freeman , Amber Murphy , Stormy Terry , John Walters , Katelyn Wiggs , Michael Young , Jessica Stanfield