RethinkWaste offers several different in-school education programs for schools in our service area to reduce their landfill waste. Our program provides all necessary infrastructure to implement recycling and composting at schools, as well as, educating students on how to properly sort their waste into the new bin system. In addition, we offer presentations that teach students the connection between waste and climate change and how their sorting choices can impact the environment’s health. We offer school-wide assemblies, lunch bin monitoring, new infrastructure, class presentations, and green team trainings. Let’s dive into the menu of the program we offer to schools and what they entail.
Full In-Schools Program
RethinkWaste’s full school program includes a site visit, new infrastructure, school-wide assemblies, and lunch bin monitoring. These parts take over the course of one school week with a site visit performed beforehand. The first step of the in-schools program is the site visit. A member of our Environmental Education team will go out to the school to assess what bins (compost and recycling or both!) and other waste-related infrastructure that are needed, and then will deliver the necessary infrastructure to the school. After the site visit, the education of proper sorting will begin when all the new bins are placed next to the existing landfill bins.
Our team then presents several school-wide assemblies for different grade levels to teach the students how to properly sort their lunch waste into the three bins (compost, recycling, and landfill). Assemblies include showing proper sorting using example items, explaining the connection between waste and climate change, and showing more steps students can take to improve the planet’s health. After the assemblies, students will usually have their lunch and get a chance to put into action what they just learned about sorting!
Typically, most of the waste created by students at school is created during lunchtime. Since most of the time students go from throwing all their waste into one landfill bin to now sorting it into three bins, RethinkWaste’s Environmental Education team members are present at the bin stations around the cafeteria to help students sort their waste properly as well as answer any of their questions about sorting. RethinkWaste team members typically lunch bin monitor every day at lunch during the week the new bins are introduced.
Class Presentations
We also offer smaller class-size presentations and demonstrations that include what items go in each bin, the relationship between waste and climate change, actions students can take to reduce waste, information about landfills, material recovery facilities (MRFs), and commercial composting facilities. Additionally, we have various waste-related games and activities that we can play with classes or can leave with teachers to facilitate afterwards.
Green Team Trainings
After the three-bin system has been implemented at a school, some schools elect to have a green team. A green team consists of student volunteers who help other students sort their waste and pick up garbage around the cafeteria during lunchtime. For green team trainings, our team will come to a school and go over proper sorting again with these students as well as cover best practices to help other students learn from their waste mistakes. We also will supply trash pickers so students can pick up waste in a safe manner and sort it into the proper bin. A green team is an amazing way for students who are interested in environmental topics to learn more about waste, help their community, build camaraderie with their fellow green team students, and have fun while doing it!
RethinkWaste is committed to helping school communities understand their agency in reducing waste and how small sorting actions can spur big environmental change. We believe schools play an integral part to reduce the waste in our service area and want to empower them to do that in any way we can!