Zero Waste: Why, and Goals & Strategies

Waste management is a part of daily operations at a school, and is often one of the most visible aspects of a campus. In terms of impact, waste has direct effects on the environment, social justice issues, and economic viability of an institution. 

• Environmental: On a planetary level, reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting mitigates the need to extract virgin materials, such as trees and metals. It also generally takes less energy and water to make a product with recycled material than with virgin resources. Reducing waste generation also reduces the flow of waste to incinerators and landfills, which produce greenhouse gas emissions, and contaminate air and groundwater supplies. 

• Social: From a social justice standpoint, waste and landfill by-products tend to have disproportionate negative impacts on low-income communities. 

• Economic: Waste reduction and diversion also saves on costly landfill hauling fees.

Waste Generation is the creation of waste through the materials economy system: extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. A successful zero waste campaign addresses the following strategies related to waste generation:

• Policies and Practices: Establish a sustainable purchasing policy with environmentally and socially preferable guidelines (i.e. eliminating or reduces single-use disposables, mandates that teaching supplies (i.e. paper, scissors, pencils, etc.) come from recyclables sources). Then support implementation of sustainable purchasing policies with clear guidelines, annual training, and a process for tracking progress. 

• Culture of Reduce/Replace, Reuse, and Repair: Model, incentivize, and provide pathways for taking action before waste is generated; for example: refillable water bottle stations, scratch paper bins, donation drives, materials repurpose centers, repair centers, food sharing tables, etc.  

Sorting waste to be hauled and/or processed usually happens within these common categories: Landfill (municipal solid waste), Recycling, and Organics. Additional streams include e-waste and hazardous waste. Successful zero waste campaigns incorporate the following waste sorting strategies: 

• Infrastructure: Installing tri-bin stations (landfill, recycling, and compost) in eating and gathering areas with high traffic, and ensure proper signs are in place. Attend to necessary custodial infrastructure for managing three streams. See list of possibilities for where to purchase tri-bin waste receptacle HERE. 

• Training*: Upon kick-off for waste initiative provide in-depth education and training for all stakeholders (students, faculty and staff, custodians, parent volunteers, etc.). Provide additional training at the start and midpoint of the school year on an annual basis - the key to this ongoing training is that it is short but frequent. 

• Tracking and Monitoring*: Waste diversion should be monitored on a monthly or quarterly basis, and the school community should be made aware of progress. 

*Things to consider for differences between elementary and secondary schools:

• • • Elementary: It is a regular practice in elementary school that student teams provide support at the bins at the end of lunch. It is important that this responsibility is shared across grade levels, and does not fall on the shoulders of one group of students.  

    • Secondary: Middle/High Schools should also consider lunch-time waste bin monitoring; however, it is recommended that this occurs in one week intervals no more than four times (4x) per year to avoid burnout and social ostracizing. Responsibilities for this may be done by a student green team, but could also be shared by leadership and athletic teams. It is highly recommended that zero waste efforts transfer beyond lunch to high traffic events such as athletic games and spirit week.

• Commercial Hauling: It is mandated by law that all schools account for three waste streams - landfill, recycling, and organics. The majority of districts/schools will utilize commercial hauling services for these streams. It is recommended that schools align with residential hauling as best as possible. 

• On-Site Processing: Many schools are opting to process a small stream of organics through garden compost systems (i.e. tumble, turn, or worm-bin), and some are moving towards processing a large portion of organics on-site through in-vessel compost systems.