The Daniel Webster Elementary School in New Rochelle rolled out the School Lunch Recycling Program.  This school has 600+ kids and generated around 13 bags of loosely mixed garbage.

Principal Melissa Passarelli and Assistant Principal Greg Middleton are big supporters of environmental change and have volunteered to be one of the New Rochelle pilot schools to help pave the way for a general roll out in September to all remaining schools.

The program is simple. Teach children to sort their lunchroom waste into different recyclable categories.

The center aisle is now  sporting a station lining up first a bucket to dispose all left over liquids, a bin for milk cartons, a bin for Commingled Recycling, a Compost bucket and a place to stack trays.

The students learned in class about this program and were eager to put their knowledge to the test. A lunchroom monitor helped the kids along during the learning phase and soon she will be able to take a back seat and enjoy the show of children sorting for the environment. As the kids become more and more on auto pilot when it comes to sorting, we will introduce more education around the environment.

The key to the program is adult supervision, and Dr Korostoff, Superintendent of schools authorized the additional hourly help to make this change happen.

Only two handful of soiled soft plastics were deemed to be garbage, that is down more then 95% from the initial 13 bags.

The food waste and the compostable trays fit comfortably in a 65 gal rollable bin, and is being picked up by Suburban Carting to go to a commercial composting site.  Milk cartons will soon be recycled through a local recycler,  Plastic commingled is fed into existing recycling streams.  A true example on how a little change in the HOW we are doing things, can make a huge difference.

Hats off to Melissa Passarelli, Principal,  Greg Middleton, Assistant Principal and Dr Korostoff, Superintendent of School, for seeing environmental change and education as Capital Improvement in our schools.