The ABCs of recycling

Schools are typically top of mind when it comes to promoting recycling. Many communities do a great job educating students about recycling by conducting classroom visits, providing informative assemblies, offering recycling facility tours and distributing coloring books and other materials. All of these efforts are done in the hopes of getting students to promote recycling at home and ideally to become life-long recyclers.

However, when it comes to diverting material from landfills, schools are not typically thought of as major contributors. For example, in California, it is estimated that school districts dispose of approximately 763,817 tons of waste per year. Throwing these materials away is both a waste of resources and a missed opportunity to teach students about becoming better environmental stewards.

Schools generate a fair amount of old corrugated containers (OCC), mixed paper and plastic, but one recyclable commodity that is especially common in schools, particularly at the elementary level, is cartons. Cartons, made mainly from paperboard, can now be recycled in 45 states. Cartons come in two types: aseptic (or shelf-stable) and gable-top (or refrigerated). Gable-top cartons, which contain milk and juice, are highly popular in schools across the country and are often thrown away. However, as carton recycling has increased around the U.S., schools are now collecting their cartons so they can be recycled into new products, such as tissue products, printing and writing paper and even building materials.

As the West and East coasts school campaign coordinators for the Carton Council of North America, we work with a wide range of schools and districts across the country to help them recognize the value in cartons and to launch successful in-school carton recycling programs. The Carton Council is a group of carton manufacturers united to deliver long-term collaborative solutions to divert valuable cartons from the landfill.
 

Launching a program

There are a few key components to consider when starting a carton recycling program, including:

• access to carton recycling in your community – Having at least one local material recovery facility (MRF) that can process cartons is crucial. To find out if carton recycling is available in your area, visit www.cartonopportunities.org to use the zip code access locator.).
• district/school leadership, custodian and student support – The next step is to identify who to approach at the school level to start discussions about a carton recycling program. This person may be the school district’s food service director, who controls the activities in the cafeteria, or the district’s facilities director, who leads the maintenance staff. There also may be a sustainability contact, a teacher or a custodian who is interested in starting the program from the bottom up. These people are often a good point of contact for identifying schools in their district that would be most likely to implement a pilot program.

Regardless of where initial discussions begin, to successfully develop and sustain a school carton recycling program, support is needed at three different levels: district or school leadership, custodial staff and students.

In defining the carton recycling process, the logistics that need to be determined include how the recycling and garbage line will be set up in the cafeteria, where the collected cartons will be stored and how often the hauler will pick up the cartons and deliver them to the MRF. The Carton Council can provide assistance, from sharing information on how to set up the actual recycling process to providing best practices used in other school districts and troubleshooting any concerns that come up as well as providing educational program materials and offering grants in some cases that can be applied toward recycling containers or other materials that may be needed to implement the program.

Some best practices for program education and promotion to the students include:

• establishing student green teams that can assist with promoting and implementing the program (Being a green team member can be viewed as a privilege, which helps institutionalize the program and ensures that the program will continue as older students move on to middle school and younger children start kindergarten.);
• holding an assembly to inform students about the new recycling program to get students excited about the program and promote it as a school-wide, collaborative effort;
• using assemblies or other school meetings to provide updates on recycling efforts and posing new challenges to engage students in recycling; and
• engaging parent or community volunteers for the program by creating a sustainability committee where adults can volunteer in the cafeteria to ensure proper emptying and recycling of cartons.
  
   

Drink. Empty. Recycle.

The basic school carton recycling program can be simplified to three main steps: drink, empty and recycle. Once students finish their meals, they bring their trays to a recycling or garbage station, where they empty any residual liquid out of the cartons into a designated container, place their empty cartons into the designated recycling container and throw their trash into the garbage receptacle. At the end of the lunch period, custodians dump any residual liquids down the sink and place the empty cartons into an outside recycling Dumpster for collection. In some programs, these tasks are done by students.

Once a program is successfully launched and the proper structure and best practices are in place, recycling cartons quickly becomes part of the daily routine for staff and students. Just like students learn how to line up in the cafeteria to get lunch, they learn how to properly throw away their lunches and empty and dispose of their cartons in the appropriate recycling container.
 

The benefits

The main benefit that schools can reap from recycling cartons is greater waste diversion. While cartons are a lightweight package, their volume takes up space in the garbage bin. Moving cartons from the garbage bin into the recycling bin gives schools an opportunity to “right-size” their garbage containers by either reducing the size of the container or the number of pickups. Either of these actions can save schools money.

Diverting the schools’ cartons from the waste stream also helps the local MRF earn more revenue by providing it with more of a valuable recyclable commodity that has returns in end markets. The value of these cartons also can benefit the community if it has a revenue-sharing agreement with the MRF.

The benefits go beyond monetary value. Though custodians may initially object to a recycling program because they fear it will cause a bigger mess in the cafeteria and result in more work for them, we have found that the opposite is true. Generally speaking, custodians find their cafeterias are actually cleaner after a recycling program is in place because students have a defined process when disposing of their lunch trays and are more orderly during lunch dismissal. Emptying residual liquids from cartons, liquid that previously went into the garbage, results in lighter loads for the custodian to carry to the Dumpsters.

And let’s not forget the long-term societal benefits of educating youth about recycling. According to Educational Interventions That Improve Environmental Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis, by Lynette Zelenzy, research shows that classroom interventions can improve environmental behaviors, such as recycling, and that establishing these behaviors at a young age can translate to a lifelong habit. But there also is a more immediate benefit to gain: Students are being instilled with a positive social behavior that they are taking home to share with their family members, thus more immediately boosting participation in community curbside recycling as well.
 

Models for success

We have seen success in a variety of different school programs around the country. The following are three main examples of carton recycling programs.

District-wide program: Des Moines Public Schools, Iowa. With the support of its waste hauler, Waste Management, and its local MRF, Greenstar (recently purchased by Waste Management) and a local carton remanufacturer, ReWall, Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) launched a successful district-wide carton recycling program in the 2012-2013 school year. In light of dedication and participation by all 61 of the district’s schools, the district has seen a 15 percent reduction in waste (approximately 31 tons), which has translated into $16,000 in fee savings and also a $13,000 rebate that is credited through the hauler.

Beyond the financial results, district-wide, custodians have reported seeing less waste move through the school cafeterias, principals have seen an increased commitment to recycling all materials and students support the program and appreciate the option to recycle at school. Through the commitment and organization of the district administration, as well as school leadership, staff and students, DMPS was able to successfully implement the program and set a strong baseline of results to build off of and improve even more each year moving forward.

To view a video that recaps the carton recycling program, visit www.youtube.com and search “Recycling Milk Cartons to Reduce Waste.” For more information about DMPS’ carton recycling program, contact Sheila Mason at sheila.mason@dmschools.org.

Single school program: Pine Jog Elementary School, Palm Beach County, Fla. As the first U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon School in Florida and one of the top green schools in the country, carton recycling is a natural behavior for students at Pine Jog Elementary School. With 920 students, the school has a large number of people moving through the cafeteria in a relatively short amount of time each day for lunch. Pine Jog launched its carton recycling program in 2008 and has since become a model of best practices for others to replicate.

On an average day, Pine Jog sees 1,300 cartons move through its cafeteria; it recycles nearly 100 percent of those cartons. With many students not finishing their milk or juice, the residual liquid being thrown into the garbage posed an issue for the school’s custodians.

To address this, and to take advantage of an opportunity to educate students about sustainable behaviors, Pine Jog created a container on wheels that features a spout at the bottom and a strainer on the top to enable easy emptying and save cartons from being accidentally dropped when liquids are emptied. Additionally, parents report that their students are implementing the recycling habits they’ve learned in school at home and educating them on how to recycle. The program has brought renewed focus to green activities at Pine Jog and motivated students to explore other ways that they can be green beyond carton recycling.

For more information about Pine Jog Elementary School’s carton recycling program, contact Fred Barch at fred.barch@palmbeachschools.org.

Champion program: Kodak Park Elementary School, Rochester, N.Y. Beyond establishing a program like the one at Pine Jog, some schools take efforts further and seek out recycling competitions to increase drive efforts. Kodak Park Elementary School has an award-winning recycling program that supports its stance as a green, environmentally friendly school. In 2012 the school entered Recycle-Bowl (http://recycle-bowl.org), a national student recycling competition presented by Keep America Beautiful (KAB), Stamford, Conn., to further motivate students to recycle. The school won for recycling the most milk and juice cartons during the competition period of roughly two months: 6.4 pounds per capita, or a total of 3,200 pounds. Kodak Park Elementary also was recognized as the New York Recycle-Bowl champion by KAB for its overall recycling efforts.

With the potential to recycle 1,800 cartons each day, the school has reduced the amount of garbage produced, resulting in cost savings from less collection fees. The cafeteria has become cleaner, and the school leadership, maintenance staff and students are happy about the improved environment. At Kodak Park, students are heard reminding one another to recycle not only in the cafeteria but also in other areas of the school and report at school about recycling at home.

For more information about the Kodak Park Elementary School carton recycling program, contact Glennis Brady at glennis.brady@rcsdk12.org.
 

Cartons offer opportunities

As a community recycling coordinator, solid waste official or even MRF operator or hauler, you are not alone in your efforts to start a school carton recycling program in your area. The Carton Council has resources to support and help get you started. You will likely find many others in your community interested in helping as well. Think beyond the curb and take advantage of all the opportunities that school carton recycling can bring to your students, their families and the greater community.

Debbi Dodson is the West Coast schools campaign coordinator for the Carton Council. She facilitates the implementation of school carton recycling programs in the U.S. West Coast region, which includes California, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. She can be reached at ddodson@san.rr.com. Barbara Heineken is the East Coast schools campaign coordinator for the Carton Council and is responsible for the implementation of school carton recycling programs in the eastern U.S., including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. She can be reached at bheineken@recycle.com. More information about school carton recycling and tools to assist in implementing a program are available at www.cartonopportunities.org.