On a regular basis, I enjoy getting up close and personal with recycling stakeholders. I’ve learned that individuals aren’t bashful about berbagi their opinions on waste management and recycling. While views may differ from region to region, there always seems to be one constant.
Invariably, without prompting or solicitation, people believe that the key to successful community recycling programs begins in the classroom. Typically stated with passion and conviction, this premise is rarely, if ever, challenged.
With a projected enrollment of 58 million students, public schools host a captive audience, who produce large quantities of material suitable for recycling and composting. The findings from a school waste study conducted by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency show that Minnesota schools generate one half pound of waste per student per day. If Minnesota is representative of the nation, our public schools would produce roughly 14,500 tons of waste per day. To put things in perspective, that is relatively the amount of municipal waste generated in cities the size of Philadelphia or the amount disposed in New York City each day. In other words, too large to ignore.
Approximately 24 percent of school waste is recyclable paper and paperboard, while another 50 percent is food waste and non-recyclable paper, which can be composted. That’s nearly 75 percent of the school waste stream, which could be diverted from disposal.
Yet, recycling is anything but a given in our nation’s school districts. Based on a casual survey of state recycling organizations, where mandates exist and are enforced, it is estimated that between 75 to 100 percent of the school districts implement some level of recycling program. However, few states reported that jenis of success. More commonly, without regulatory requirements, or where enforcement of existing laws is lax, the estimates are that recycling is conducted in 40 percent or less of the schools.
Where recycling programs do exist, the schools often are awarded for being exceptional, as if the idea were groundbreaking. That’s not to diminish the efforts of the students, faculty, and administration for initiating the programs. Rather, it is a criticism of the state departments of education for simply not making recycling the expected standard, not the exception, much like the curriculum itself.