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Success Stories - Schools / School Systems

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Alden Central School – Alden, NY

Alden Central School, which educates children from kindergarten through 12th grade, implemented a comprehensive waste reduction program at all campus buildings: high school, middle school, intermediate school, and primary education buildings, and the grounds department. The school and its 250 staff members eliminated 450 pounds of polystyrene cafeteria trays and dishes by switching to reusable products. It also composted 900 pounds of cafeteria waste and 150 pounds of yard trimmings for use as mulch on building grounds.

Alden Central School implemented a comprehensive waste reduction program at all campus buildings: high school, middle, intermediate, and primary education buildings, and the grounds department. Students and 250 staff members eliminated 400 pounds of polystyrene cafeteria trays and dishes by switching to reusable products and composted 850 pounds of cafeteria waste and 100 pounds of yard trimmings for use as mulch on building grounds.

Desert Sands Unified School District - CA

Desert Sands Unified School District, a district of 27 schools located 100 miles east of Los Angeles, integrates service-learning opportunities for students into a comprehensive waste reduction program. In 2002, for example, members of a school environmental club collected abandoned tires that were scattered in the nearby desert. The students delivered the tires to a local company that recycled them. In addition to implementing a broad recycling program, the school district provides surplus items to a sister school in Mexico, uses recycled tires for playground replacement lining, and purchases carpeting that is composed of recycled plastic.

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) – Los Angeles, CA

Incorporating nearly 1,000 sites, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) generates a wide variety of materials, including paper, food scraps, and electronics. To discuss new technologies and waste reduction ideas, LAUSD set up quarterly meetings with the city of Los Angeles and other nearby cities, the California Integrated Waste Management Board, and the Los Angeles Conservation Corps. In 2004, LAUSD recycled nearly 4,230 tons of textbooks and other mixed paper, plus 45 tons of computer equipment.

LAUSD is often building new schools. Rather than disposing of asphalt and concrete from building deconstruction, LAUSD ships the materials to a manufacturer for reuse in new products. In an innovative partnership, the school district then purchases the asphalt-based products from the company and uses them in new school construction projects. In 2003, LAUSD recycled more than 30 million pounds of concrete and asphalt! In a sector in which funding is always tight, the district has also found numerous ways to save money by reducing waste. Reusing pallets saved LAUSD more than $77,400 in purchasing costs and $11,800 in disposal costs; changing the way it serves cafeteria food saved $620,800 in food disposal costs; and grasscycling saved $395,800 in yard trimmings disposal costs. The district also recycles mixed paper, corrugated cardboard, and beverage containers in schools and began an electronics recycling program in 2003.

Rather than dumping construction-site asphalt and concrete, LAUSD ships leftover materials back to a manufacturer for reuse in new asphalt-based products that the district then purchases. The school district, which projected that it will construct 150 new schools in the next 5 to 10 years, uses this “new” material from the manufacturer for use on future construction sites. In 2001 alone, the district diverted 9,000 tons of construction material from landfills. In addition, the district requires landscapers to compost all grass clippings, 6,750 tons of which were composted in 2001. In 2002, the district will expand this effort by collecting milk cartons and food waste for composting.

With all the outdoor excitement, the school district remembers to promote efficiency within its buildings as well. Through a reuse program for computer and office products, such as laser toner, inkjet, fax, and copier cartridges, schools sell used cartridges for $2 each and use the savings to buy the remanufactured cartridges back. This activity diverted more than 313 tons of plastic from the landfill.

To further advance recycling, the school district plans to implement a closed-loop program for polystyrene lunch trays. It will select 50 schools for initial trials, and hopes to eventually divert 114 tons of polystyrene trays from disposal each year. In 2001, the district recycled 3,600 tons of paper and 3,024 tons of cardboard, and it plans to increase these figures as it expands its successful mixed-paper recycling program to all schools and administrative offices.

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Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) – Office of Environmental Health and Safety – Los Angeles, CA

With nearly 1 million students and 80,000 employees, LAUSD’s accomplishment of diverting more than 50 percent of its waste from landfills is no small feat. LAUSD’s success can be attributed to its strong waste prevention program, targeting nontraditional materials for reuse and donation. School bus tires are recapped by adding three inches of rubber to the tires, extending their life and preventing approximately 100 tons of waste. LAUSD also practices an Offer Versus Serve program in school cafeterias to reduce the amount of food wasted, helping it avoid $600,000 in food disposal costs in 2005. To help increase paper recycling, LAUSD provided deskside mixed paper collection bins adorned with the WasteWise logo to 220 schools. Through its waste reduction activities, LAUSD saved more than $3 million throughout the year.

As the second-largest school district in the country, LAUSD is committed to expanding waste reduction in its schools and imparting a strong waste reduction message to the more than 700,000 students it services. The district met its 50 per-cent waste diversion goal in 2000 and conducted on-site visits with more than 40 schools to explore ways to improve recycling. To prevent food waste, the district began an “offer versus serve” program in which students can choose the food they would like to consume, preventing an estimated 13,646 tons of food waste in 2000. The district replaced wooden pallets with plastic pallets that can be used 50 times longer and recycled, displacing more than 171 tons of wooden pallets. Additionally, it diverted approximately 8,080 tons of grass from the waste stream in 2000 by grass-cycling the majority of its athletic fields, and is developing a grass-cycling policy. The district has adopted an Environmentally Preferable Procurement Policy to support the purchase of products that contain recycled content and to minimize impacts to the environment. The district is working with the City of Los Angeles in a cooperative recycling pilot program to further determine what can be diverted from its waste stream.

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Sligo Adventist School

Sligo Adventist School implemented several innovative waste prevention activities in 1997. For example, the school switched to bulk juice dispensers so reusable plastic cups could be used in the cafeteria. This project eliminated more than 1 ton of drink boxes. In addition, the school used a vermicomposting system to dispose of cafeteria food waste, removing 500 pounds of food scraps from the waste stream.

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