Volunteers Make Quick Work of Waste Loop Audit at Alpine Lakes Elementary

It was a pleasant afternoon, school had just let out, and four boys and a dad were pulling on nitrile gloves, preparing for some dirty but essential work. They, along with Amanda Close and Emma Allison from the nonprofit Waste Loop, were going to perform a waste audit from Alpine Lakes Elementary’s (ALPS) three lunch periods that day.

A large tarp lay spread out at their feet, surrounded by buckets for sorting. The job? To separate every part of the lunch garbage into six categories: landfill, recycling, glass, food rescue, compost and yes, liquid.

This exercise helps provide hard data, to go along with the data collected at every school, to support the idea of sorting at the schools to reduce the waste stream bound for the landfill. Diversion of recyclables and compostables can save the district money (the dumpsters won’t fill as fast or need transporting as often. However, there will be new, likely lesser costs associated with recycling and composting) in addition to the environmental benefits of making less waste. Add to that the educational opportunities available as students study the science and economics around waste diversion, recycling and composting.

This day was chili day at ALPS, notable by the aroma as the garbage was poured out onto the tarp. It was also apparent that broccoli had been on the menu, given the abundance of it in the pile.

The boys, Nico, Emil, Desi and Orien, needed minimal training before they plunged in, gloves on, sleeves rolled up, to sort chili bowls, milk cartons, plastic wrappers and utensils from the mound of mostly food waste. They dug through it and separated what could be food rescue, such as whole apples or unopened milk cartons.

The boys carried the full buckets over to a scale to weigh the contents and then helped Close with the math of category percentages. The liquid that remained on the tarp was collected with squeegee and dustpan as well.

The results were startling, but Close was not surprised. The results fairly closely matched the percentages she’d found in the four other audits that Waste Loop has done at the schools.

Out of 280 lbs. of waste audited thus far, if everything was sorted properly, only 14.1% of the current waste would go to the landfill. The other percentages are 58.4% compostable, 0.8% mixed recycling, 0.3% glass, 8.7% liquid and 17.8% food rescue. From these numbers, it’s clear that recycling will only divert the lunch waste stream marginally, but composting will have a huge impact. The plan is also for the liquid to be captured and put down the drain so it too doesn’t go into the dumpsters.

The timing of the audits is crucial. Not only is Winton Manufacturing getting the industrial composting service up and running soon, but school administrators can start thinking about how to use this information to effect change next school year.

“We have four more audits scheduled for the month of May, with plans to schedule a couple more beyond those,” explained Close, who serves as Education and Outreach Coordinator for Waste Loop. “We hope to continue until 200 lbs. from each school are sorted, but ultimately it will depend on volunteer availability.”

The high school audit will be more in-depth, because students who leave campus during lunch also use the foyer garbage cans. Additionally, they could audit the culinary classes’ waste.

If composting is deemed workable at the schools, one helpful aspect is that all food prep is done in the high school kitchen, so that would be the only place to collect kitchen scraps for composting.

The enterprise with Waste Loop fits well with Cascade School District’s strategic framework, which prioritizes helping students learn about how they impact the world around them and working with community partners.

Waste Loop has already helped initiate formalized mixed paper recycling in the classrooms, utilizing a Department of Ecology grant to cover the bins and labels.

Waste Loop is engaging the community in more ways relating to sustainability, including co-hosting workshops, being at the Farmers Market and continuing their recycling center operations. More info can be found at: www.wasteloop.org.