GreenStar Schools

OOS Waste Walk through (lunch area only) and Lunchtime Waste Audit

April 21 2020

Walk-Through Waste Assessment and Lunch-Time Waste Audit with 4th/5th grades students

Summary

Jo O’Brien (librarian), Jadelyn Chang (Kindergarten), Lisa Garrety (2nd) and Sandi Shorago (1^rd) at SMELC Zero Waste 2019 approached OOS Schools Program staff about their desire to implement composting and waste reduction at Foster City Elementary in the 2019/2020 school year as one part of their Zero Waste Unit creation and planning for the 2019-20 school year.Foster City Elementary school is a K-5 school with 859 students.

The school already had a robust paper recycling culture so OOS focused on a walk-through waste assesment of lunchtime eating areas as that is where the teachers wanted to base their zero-waste unit due to the amount of waste diversion potential of diverting organic waste from the landfill. The initial walk-through took place on Sept. 16 2019. On two separate occasions, the SMELC group also visited Audubon and Laurel Elementary which already had recess and lunchtime organics diversion in place to study their set-up and note best practices. 

A preliminary lunchtime waste audit was then set-up and on Oct. 4, 2019, OOS staff led 4/5th grade students through a lunchtime waste audit to gauge the estimated amount of landfill currently being created each day and the waste diversion potential (by weight) after organics and recycling are diverted from the current landfill stream. 

Measurements were as follows: 

~245 lbs of landfill created each day

~20 bags of lunchtime waste created each day

~58% (or 142 lbs) waste diversion potential after organics (food waste, trays, paper boats, and milk cartons) were diverted from the landfill stream. 

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