The key to New York City saving $350 million per year will be determined by how well students across a hundred schools are able to take out the garbage. On September 8, the city launched Zero Waste Schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious five-year pilot program to determine best practices with the ultimate goal of “sending zero waste to landfills by 2021.”
New York City has partnered with the Department of Education, the Department of Sanitation and an environmental nonprofit – GrowNYC in a $1.1 million plan to ensure the program’s success and ability to provide resources. However, despite the collaborative effort to prevent the state’s budget from being thrown into the garbage, there are no imminent arrangements to allocate additional funds back into the 100 schools, causing scattered participation from teachers and faculty.
Zero Waste Schools is part of a greater citywide initiative to eliminate the transportation of trash to landfills by 2030. “I look at schools as microcosms of communities,” said Thaddeus Copeland, Deputy Director of Sustainability and Operations. “Schools are an important part of this plan because they are the cultivation of habits when you’re young – recycling being one of those.”
According to Copeland, New York City landfills have reached capacity and are out of space. “The rate spent on exporting garbage to other states and countries increases approximately $6.6 million each year,” Copeland said. “Nearly 90 percent of what the schools throw out is recyclable or compostable. A lot of it is food waste, paper, milk cartons, or plastic. There’s a potential to really lower the amount of waste going to landfills.”
“Schools participating in the first phase of the program are chosen specifically based on their location along two major Department of Sanitation waste collection routes,” said Carmen Fariña, Chancellor of the Department of Education.
According to Copeland, the main component of ensuring the program’s success relies on communication of each of the departments. “Before the academic year began, the Department of Education and GrowNYC had an intervention with custodians, food managers and principals,” Copeland said.
All participating schools are provided with a volunteer-based sustainability manager who formulates a Green Team and drafts recycling and energy reduction plans for the school. “The aspect of liaising between the infrastructures of multiple schools is the program’s greatest hurdle,” said Apoorva Mathur, Outreach Coordinator for the Recycling Champions Program of GrowNYC.
“I am assigned to six buildings total,” Mathur said, “but some of my buildings have two schools inside and some have three. It’s difficult to coordinate on site because each have a different principals, custodial staff and student regents.”
The program is heavily reliant on student and faculty engagement. Participation from certain grades and schools tend to be lower due to varying priorities from kindergarten through high school. “We’ve gotten mixed reviews,” Mathur said. “From K-9th grade students really love learning about sustainability and how to use correct recycling bins, but priorities shift as high school students start preparing for college.”
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