Every day “being green” at Butte Creek School means putting cafeteria food scraps into an outdoor compost bin. And washing out milk cartons and half-empty yogurt containers for their classmates. And collecting recyclables.
The grossest job is probably, “digging through the compost and peeling the stickers off banana skins,” said student Jayden Dewitt.
“’Tis not for the fainthearted,” chimed in classmate Quinn Kelley.
Eighteen middle school students in teacher Garron Lamoreau’s leadership class are working to achieve “zero waste” lunches and other environmental goals at Butte Creek to make it the only certified Oregon Green School in the Silver Falls School District.
“They’ve been so good, so amazingly dedicated to doing icky jobs,” Lamoreau said.
“They have filled up the school’s recycling bin four times this year already, and they are great about teaching other students – I think kids are the best messengers to each other.”
Right now, the leadership class – unofficially known as the Green Team – is running a month-long “zero waste” lunch challenge, pitting classrooms at their rural K-8 school against each other. At the end of the competition, the class that’s logged the most days with no lunchtime garbage will earn a pizza party.
Seeking green status, Butte Creek recently underwent a waste audit from Clackamas County Refuse & Recycling Association’s Laurel Bates. She’s also a local coordinator for Oregon Green Schools, part of a team that’s helped nearly 200 schools achieve recognition since the program started 20 years ago.
Silver Falls School District administrators said the old Mark Twain Middle School once earned certification.
“To become an entry-level Oregon Green School, a school must have an effective and permanent recycling and waste reduction program, analyze its energy and water use, do a waste audit and set goals to work on over the next three years,” Bates said.
When Butte Creek’s leadership team analyzed the contents of a single day’s trash, most classrooms had “little to no garbage,” Lamoreau said, but his students did find some paper and school supplies, such as pencils, had been thrown away. The trash can in the staff room actually contained the most recyclables.
“The students were definitely tickled by that,” Bates said.
“The most important thing (the Green Team does) is just give people an opportunity to reduce and recycle their waste,” Lamoreau said. “We try to make it easy for them. People want to do good, and if you give them the opportunity, they will.”
His own journey to becoming Butte Creek’s environmental advocate began when he advised a group of students who graduated eighth grade in 2014. They started a Random Acts of Kindness Club, which planted the school’s garden and did a cleanup at Silverton Reservoir.
In that original club was Tyler Bishop, now a high school student who regularly returns to Lamoreau’s class to help with leadership projects. Last year, he helped build the wooden compost bin by the garden; it should yield its first compost this spring.
After that, Lamoreau took a two-year leave of absence to teach at the International School of Panama. From their apartment overlooking the beach, he and his wife could see firsthand the shocking amount of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean.
“You realize how much garbage is out there,” he said. “We do a pretty good job of hiding it up here … it’s out of sight, out of mind.”
When he returned to Butte Creek in 2016, he began showing his students what he’d seen and learned. At first, a small group worked on environmental measures, while others focused on more traditional leadership tasks. Now everyone in the leadership class, which meets daily, is taking part in the effort to be greener.
To read the full story, visit http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/local/silverton/2018/01/21/butte-creeks-students-going-green/1050649001/.