Reusing and recycling is an important part of everyday life for students and staff at West Middle School. Our school responsibly recycles most things that can be recycled in our county. The county's recycling coordinator has visited with students annually to educate them on what they can recycle at home and at school. We even took a field trip to the Materials Recovery Facility to see where recyclable materials go when they are picked up to be separated to individual commodities.
West Middle School uses Abitibi Paper Retriever and Cartridges for Kids to recycle paper and ink cartridges for profit. The money raised by these programs is stored in a special account for future environmental projects completed by students and staff. Our cartridges are collected in a special "art cart" painted by two of our teachers and displayed as part of a county-wide recycling awareness initiative.
During the 2009-2010 school year, a student-directed project focused on improving our efforts to reduce and recycle in the cafeteria. The "Waste Watchers" project allowed students to identify two problems in the cafeteria - we weren't recycling all of our waste that could be recycled and we were wasting an incredible amount of uneaten food. Problems identified, the students took action to improve recycling and even began composting! Although our composting efforts have fallen off, there is a chance they may resume soon. On the other hand, our recycling effort has continued to grow and as part of this year's involvement in the first ever Recycle Bowl (National Recycling Competition), we eliminated half of the trash cans required during lunchtime and quadrupled the necessary recylcing containers!
Paper is one of the main solid waste products at a school and while West Middle does an excellent job of recycling our paper, the more impressive result of our environmental stewardship is the fact that teachers are reducing the amount of paper used. West Middle teachers often use both sides of paper, encourage students to take notes continuously in their notebooks instead of starting on new pages, and many are now using electronic documents and other non-print methods for assessing student learning.
Recently, we removed a large recycling center that was housed in our main lobby area. This change occured because last year we began single stream recycling in all of our classrooms. Now, instead of only having one central location for teachers to recycle cardboard, aluminum, plastic, and glass...every classroom has their own special recycling bin for this recyclable waste!
Below are some photos and videos of our efforts to reduce waste at our school...
Solid Waste Reduction
Reusing and recycling is an important part of everyday life for students and staff at West Middle School. Our school responsibly recycles most things that can be recycled in our county. The county's recycling coordinator has visited with students annually to educate them on what they can recycle at home and at school. We even took a field trip to the Materials Recovery Facility to see where recyclable materials go when they are picked up to be separated to individual commodities.
West Middle School uses Abitibi Paper Retriever and Cartridges for Kids to recycle paper and ink cartridges for profit. The money raised by these programs is stored in a special account for future environmental projects completed by students and staff. Our cartridges are collected in a special "art cart" painted by two of our teachers and displayed as part of a county-wide recycling awareness initiative.
During the 2009-2010 school year, a student-directed project focused on improving our efforts to reduce and recycle in the cafeteria. The "Waste Watchers" project allowed students to identify two problems in the cafeteria - we weren't recycling all of our waste that could be recycled and we were wasting an incredible amount of uneaten food. Problems identified, the students took action to improve recycling and even began composting! Although our composting efforts have fallen off, there is a chance they may resume soon. On the other hand, our recycling effort has continued to grow and as part of this year's involvement in the first ever Recycle Bowl (National Recycling Competition), we eliminated half of the trash cans required during lunchtime and quadrupled the necessary recylcing containers!
Paper is one of the main solid waste products at a school and while West Middle does an excellent job of recycling our paper, the more impressive result of our environmental stewardship is the fact that teachers are reducing the amount of paper used. West Middle teachers often use both sides of paper, encourage students to take notes continuously in their notebooks instead of starting on new pages, and many are now using electronic documents and other non-print methods for assessing student learning.
Recently, we removed a large recycling center that was housed in our main lobby area. This change occured because last year we began single stream recycling in all of our classrooms. Now, instead of only having one central location for teachers to recycle cardboard, aluminum, plastic, and glass...every classroom has their own special recycling bin for this recyclable waste!
Below are some photos and videos of our efforts to reduce waste at our school...