2.3: Solid Waste Reduction

Return to Objective 2: Student-driven Sustainability Practices

Commodore's strength as a Green School has been as recyclers. Older students educate younger students about what can be recycled in Community (multi-grade level) and grade-level wide meetings. Rotating groups of students collect the recycling from the classroom on a weekly basis. The city still picks up a few cans of classroom recycling each week and volunteers drive cardboard to the Sisson Street dump. We are eager for full recycling pick up to begin again. All Commodore students Pre-K to 8th grade recycle in their classrooms using the smaller yellow bins shown above. On a weekly basis, groups of 16 middle school students (participants rotate on a monthly basis) pick up classroom recycling and move to the front of the school for pick up. Approximately 130 student 6th-8th grade students participate in recycling pick up each school year. Shown above is an 8th grade student recycling in November of 2019 and 6th grade boys advisory leading the recycling collection for the month of February 2022. These students collect the small bins from each classroom and combine into the larger bins for pick up. While they're combining they constantly checking to remove any materials that should not be included in single stream recycling.

Commodore has so many school supplies, but often they only are partially used. In order to reduce waste, one 8th grade advisory (15 students) and one 6th grade advisory (13 students) work to refurbish materials so that they can be reused in classrooms. This helps to prevent waste from buying new materials. The advisories work on reuse projects every other Tuesday.

100 2nd graders, 100 5th graders, and 100 6th graders use reusable water bottles in their classrooms. Funded through Donor's Choose projects, reusable water bottles help reduce waste from paper cups and one-time-use plastic water bottles. Students have class jobs to fill water bottles and check that they are all present at the end of the day. Students are in charge of washing their water bottles on a weekly basis. 6th grade students were involved in advocating for and helping draft their Donors Choose project.

Commodore students love art and use their environment to inspire and create. 10-12 5th-8th grade student participate in Art Club after school. For many of their projects, students take advantage of many unused materials around the school and bring them new life. The school produces lots of cardboard waste, which the art club has access to. The first art club project below shows students reusing some of this cardboard to create display letters for bookshelves (Jan/Feb 2022).