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So far some 3,300 ninety-gallon bins are out at schools, along with 735 sixty-gallon bins, 83 six-yard dumpster size bins, and 36 four-yard bins. Five hundred forty one schools are participating in the free recycling program. Photo courtesy LAUSD Recycling Program.
by Racquel Palmese
Los Angeles, seeking to realize the goal of becoming a “zero waste” city, embarked on a pilot project to provide recycling bins and pick up services free of charge to 10 pilot elementary schools in 2006. Today the LAUSD recycling program has expanded to 541 elementary, middle and high schools, and includes primary care centers, early education centers, special education centers and adult learning centers. By all measures, including the diversion of some 24 million gallons of trash, and counting, from landfills every year, the program is a huge success. But what is most exciting to Stevan Casares, the recycling program manager for the city-school district collaboration, is that over 50,000 third, fourth and fifth grade students have been educated about recycling through the program. Casares, who works for the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, visits campuses talking to plant managers, administrators and teachers. He presents at PTA meetings and faculty meetings explaining how the program works, what types of things are recyclable. “I have an education arm with a couple of part-time employees,” he says, “and their sole purpose is to go out to elementary schools and do 20-minute recycling presentations. They teach about the three R’s – Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. They talk about landfills and why we need to recycle. The presentation is like a game we play with the kids to make sure they have the information. We give away pencil tops and other things made from recycled materials so they can see the end products. I also have someone with experience as a collections driver who talks to plant managers, educating them about how to use the bins, what can go into them.” Getting Buy-in From the Schools Each school is allowed as many bins as they think they can manage, but Casares wants to make sure they get used. “We get a lot of questions,” he says, “and we want people to understand the process and to use the bins as part of their routines.” Most elementary campuses use 90 gallon bins, which are the same as a residential single family home would use. The trucks that pick up recyclables from residences include the schools on their routes. For larger middle and high school campuses, the city provides six-yard bins, which are picked up weekly by front loading vehicles. This requires an assessment of the campus to determine the number of bins that might be needed and to make sure there is a clear area for pickup. The program has mainly focused on elementary schools, but a few months ago, Casares began working with middle and high schools as well. “Right now we have about 3,300 ninety-gallon bins out at schools,” says Casares. “We also have 735 sixty-gallon bins, 83 six-yard dumpster size bins, and 36 four-yard bins. “ Working Down to Zero Waste Although the program is for LAUSD’s schools and charter schools within the Los Angeles city limits, Casares says he gets calls all the time from schools outside the city that are still part of LAUSD and wish to participate. He wishes he could comply. A school outside the city, in the South Bay, was inspired by the program to launched its own project, called “Zero Trash Day.” “One of our schools, Palisades Elementary, took this on as well,” he says. “They did it on their own – a zero waste lunch on Tuesdays to figure out how much they could reduce. They asked the plant manager how many bags of trash they created in a day, and he said about 40. So the teachers sat down with the students and decided to run a contest to see who can reduce the greatest amount of trash in a lunchtime. The first couple of weeks they got the bags down from 40 to 20 – cut it in half. That was great, but it also had an ancillary effect. They started having less trash throughout the week.” Casares says that the following year, there was a new group of students, and the older ones began mentoring the younger ones. Then, during their zero waste lunches, they went from 10 bags to 4. The rest of the week, they reduced their trash from 40 bags to 10 bags a week – a 74 percent reduction in their trash. The students began to realize that they could reduce trash by substituting one thing for another. “They told each other not to buy certain things ,” said Caseres. “Don’t buy the pizza with the plate and fork and napkin, buy this orange, or buy this other thing that only has one plate. So through competition they educated each other. They began to make decisions on the lunch line and also at home. ‘If I bring a lunch box it means I don’t bring a paper.’ They got it, the concept of reuse and reducing the waste stream.” A Whole Lot of Trash Another LAUSD school implemented a unique program, a zero-waste day, where students had to carry their trash with them instead of dropping it into a receptacle. “They realized, wow, that’s a lot of trash,” said Casares. “You have to institutionalize the concept of recycling at the school, and then they start having the awareness all the time. The schools who do it really well are the ones who make it part of the culture of the school and the curriculum. They will have a leadership group or an eco club. Or the science department really gets behind it. Basically it gives a sense of pride for the students because they are taking care of their campus. It’s no longer something an adult does. They get to own it and they get empowered.” Awarded for Leadership A coveted aspect of the LAUSD recycling program is the yearly Recycling Excellence Awards presented to nine participating schools by the City. They are honored for showing a “true commitment to creating an ecologically friendly campus.” One grand prize winning school receives a $2,000 grant, and eight runners up receive $1,000 grants. The money is mean to assist the school’s recycling program. It’s an award developed to give additional incentive to schools to join the program, says Casares, “for campuses that go above and beyond our normal recycling program. Some schools outreach to the community with battery drives or by finding new ways to recycle. One of our schools, Camino Nuevo elementary, contacted local companies to figure out ways to recycle the school’s used glue sticks and crayons through a nonprofit organization.” Some schools organize “eco fairs” and invite the community onto the campus to see different types of green technology. Others plant gardens, change to energy efficient light bulbs, chart energy and water use or make charts of energy and water use. “One school actually charted the amount of trash they produced and how much they reduced it,” says Casares. “It turned out they reduced it by 80 percent.” Besides Los Angeles’ long term goal of being a zero waste city, Casares says the city is doing this to help create the next generation of citizens who will be the recyclers of the future. “The first thing we have to do is teach the kids who will be in charge of the city in the next ten or fifteen years about the benefits of recycling. This is a great tool for cities and it really helps the schools. They not only get free recycling, they pay less for regular trash pickup because they’re producing less waste.”
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