The K12 Innovation Accelerator Program

Zero Waste and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Amanda Breheny

Queensbury School District
March 2023

Queensbury, NY Middle School students work with the United Nations to achieve sustainable development goals by 2030.  We will transform our school community into a Zero Waste school district.

Here are the United Nations Sustainable development goals and more information https://sdgs.un.org/goals [sdgs.un.org]  We will work directly with www.purewaterfortheworld.org [purewaterfortheworld.org] and use resources from https://www.worldwaterday.org/ [worldwaterday.org] 

The United Nations has set 17 sustainable development goals to be achieved by 2030.  My students and I are focusing on 3 of these goals to do our part to help create a better environment for all.  To end hunger my students use www.freerice.com [freerice.com]  For each question they get correct in Spanish they donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Programme.  My students have donated more than 400,000 grains of rice to help end hunger.    

Clean Water and sanitation is another goal set by the United Nations.  World Water Day is March 22, 2023.  My students are working with Pure Water for the World www.purewaterfortheworld.org [purewaterfortheworld.org] to provide funding for water filtration systems for developing countries.  They will promote awareness of water scarcity.  They will create bilingual sanitation education.  My students will raise funds to purchase biosand filters for families living in remote areas in Honduras.  We will interview representatives from Pure Water for the World.  A representative from Pure Water for the World is coming all the way from Honduras to congratulate and thank my students for making a positive impact on so many families  living in Trojes, Honduras.   

Sustainable cities and communities is the third goal my students will work on this year to help the United Nations reach their goals by 2030.  There is a lot of waste in a school district.  My students and I are starting to work on a project to transform our school to be a Zero Waste School district.  This year we will start with recycling out returnable bottles in the cafeteria.  The money received from our returnable bottle will fund games and entertainment for our middle school cafeteria.  We will start to compost the fruit and vegetable scraps from the cafeteria to donate to a local zoo.  Our ELA department does a unit on the Landfill Harmonic in Uruguay.  We will have a Google Meet with Favio Chavez the music director of the Landfill Harmonic to learn how his students used recycled materials from a local landfill to build their very own instruments.  We will exchange music from our students in band, orchestra and chorus.  This event will spark interest in recycling in our school district.  We will begin to look at more ways we can become a zero waste school district.