We Future Cycle is proud to announce that White Plains will be joining the program.
Under the leadership of the Director of Facilities Frank Stefanelli two pilot schools are starting to source separate and food compost this fall.
Tag Archives: environmental education
Waste Management in Germany, 87% recycling rate
In Germany, Source Separation is old news, everybody does it . And I mean
E V E R Y B O D Y!
It is working because Germany applied country wide the same strategy. German households, and buildings are all set up the same way. Everybody is sorting food waste into the brown “BioTonne”, Paper into the “Blue Bin” , all packaging into the “Yellow Bin” and then there is the black bin for left over garbage.
The pick up schedule is set up to reward recycling and to penalize garbage. Country wide food waste pick up takes place once per week, Paper and Packaging Materials are alternating once per week and the left over garbage is only picked up once per month. Each bin has a bar code and is read at point of pick up. The cost per consumer is calculated by weight whereas food waste and recycling has a very low per pound fee, and remaining garbage a very high per pound fee.
The keys to success were
1. consistent signage, consistent colors of bins
2. supervision at point of collection (oops stickers, and ultimately fines for non compliance)
3. pay per throw via bar code, per pound cost differentiated by material.
4. Bio Digesters for food waste management .
The results are just amazing.
In Numbers: Germany generates some 50 million tons of waste per year from its 82.5 million people. 87% of that waste is recycled through household and industrial source separation.
Construction debris is only accepted source separated to particular standards.
Grocery stores are required to offer disposal of hard to recycle materials and with that came a revolution in packaging, as suddenly the point of sale was responsible for what it put on its shelves.
There are no active landfills in Germany, a few incinerators are dealing with the remaining 13% of left over garbage. Italy is sending its trash to Germany for incineration, and Germany is actually harvesting that trash from its recyclables before sending it to the incinerator.
And the absolute best is, that it is now cost efficient to harvest old landfills, which is starting to happen in several areas all over Germany.
A true example of what can be possible if everybody is seeing the greater good, rather then the quick buck for some selected few.
Mamaroneck’s Hommocks Middle School to Join the We Future Cycle Program
Under the decisive leadership of Hommocks Middleschool Principal Dr Seth Weitzman, students will be learning hands on about sustainability. Dr Weitzman asked We Future Cycle to help with the implementation of the lunchroom as well as the building wide recycling program.
Representatives from PTA, teachers and staff took part in a meeting today to shape this upcoming environmental as well as social initiative. Dr Weitzman has been planning this well, writing and recently receiving a grant from the Mamaroneck Education Foundation to cover the cost.
Over the summer, plans will be put into place and come September 1st, Hommocks students are going to make a big difference. According to their head custodian, the school is generating 31 bags of garbage at lunch as well as 20 bags from night clean. We expect that 90-95 percent of that can be diverted into recycling and composting.
We Future Cycle is excited to be working with Hommocks.
New Rochelle Columbus Students are making a huge difference
Introducing Sustainability Education and Source Separation to a school is a massive undertaking because of the sheer number of stakeholders. Think about it, changing behavior from “throwing it all away” to “responsibly sorting” in a building that has 1,100 people zooming through it at all times is huge!
Well, New Rochelle’s Columbus Elementary School is showing how it is done.
Ms. Nunez, Principal, and Ms. Owens, Assistant Principal, know that it takes everybody to be on the same page to be successful – not just within the building, but also from Food Service, Facilities, Central Administration and of course the parents. A brilliant move to create consensus and ownership of the program at every level.
We Future Cycle then presented to each stakeholder group, such as the custodial staff, teachers, parents, monitors, and every single student in small groups. Sharing the visual of the amount of garbage that is being generated every day, and then adding it up to just one week was greeted with audible sounds of shock and disbelief.
23 bags of trash every day is a pretty powerful argument, and that is just from lunch. It does not even include the 20 bags coming out of night clean.
We Future Cycle involved the students to help with a Waste Audit. The students counted every single packaging material that is brought into the cafeteria and the raw data is now with the 5th grade Kaleidoscope students to work with. Learning how hard data collection can be was a lesson in itself.
Read here how Columbus students reduced their lunchroom waste by 98%.
Setting up a building to allow for proper flow of materials relies heavily on clear and consistent signage as well as proper placement of the correct bins. Head Custodian George directed his team to set up each bin as per our suggestion with the signage provided by us, and the success was instantaneous. Kindergarten students carefully rinsed out their snack containers to place them into the commingled bin, proudly informing the teacher. “See, I am recycling, Mr Mastro.’ Every day, eager hands are up to get the job to bring the class room bins into the central hall way stations.
Columbus is only a few days into the process, but has already successfully reduced lunchroom waste by 98%, from just under 400 lbs per lunch to only 8 lbs, and the building output has also drastically been reduced by diverting the paper and commingled into recycling.
Columbus students are super excited because a film crew is covering the transformation of the school and the documentary is going to be shown on the big screen. I can share already with you that Columbus is full of raw talent. So, watch out for the showing of “Columbus Students are Making a Real Difference” coming soon to the picture house near you.
How Much is Actually “a Ton of Garbage”?
Garbage costs money. However only very few people actually know how much it costs and what a ton looks like. Very few of us think further then to the curb.
Let’s look at school garbage a little closer. A school with 830 students generated 23 large black bags of garbage every lunch, the total weight of those bags is 398.5 lbs.
This is what 23 bags look like. 
Now that we know what about 400 lbs of garbage looks like, lets think about it.
A ton of garbage costs the tax payer around $80.00 to just dump it onto the tipping floor of the Incinerator, the big trash burning facility up in Peekskill. 400 lbs is a fifth of a ton. So, imagine 5 times the amount you see, or 115 bags of trash. Clearly the $80 per ton does not represent the only cost of garbage. This material has to be put in bags, then brought outside into the dumpster, then loaded by workers into diesel fuel guzzling trucks (about 2.5 miles per gallon of diesel), driven to a transfer station, dumped there, then loaded onto large trucks and driven 50 miles up north to be dumped onto the tipping floor of the incinerator. And then it is burnt into our air. I get dizzy just looking at how often this material needs to be touched and handled for it “to go away”. It takes that much time and effort to “just throw something away”.
We just started the School lunch recycling program in this school and the kids sorted their lunchwaste into liquids, commingled, milk cartons, compost and trash. The results were astounding. 
Out of the previous 398.5 lbs, only 8 lbs were actually non recyclable. That means that 98% of the material is recyclable. So, “just throwing it away” is not just costing us a lot of money, but in fact, we use tax payer money to burn materials that we could easily sell for a profit. 
This is what 10 lbs of commingled looks like. Some math on the value of commingled. 1 ton of plastic PETE 1 sells from the Yonkers MRF for around $800. (the cost is market driven, oil dependent and is fluctuating). 10 lbs of plastic (to simplify this calculation, it is all the same resin) 2000 lbs of plastics sell for $800.00 10 lbs = $4.00 Milk cartons sell for $450 per ton. 30 lbs = $6.75 
And this is what 15 lbs of milk cartons look like, we had two of these bags. And two full 5 gallon buckets with waste liquid weighing 74 lbs. That means we use fossil fuels to truck liquids 50 miles north just to burn them, rather then sending them down the drain? By far the heaviest was the food waste. 180 lbs of wasted food from 800 kids, plus about 50 lbs of untouched never opened food that was placed into the share basket. Clearly, a ton of garbage is a lot, but as you can see, only 2% of it is actually non recyclable.
So, our convenience to “just throw it away” costs us all dearly. Not just as hard cash but also at great environmental expense.
We Future Cycle’s Bash The Trash Documentary showing in Pelham Picture House on April 22, 6:30 pm
On April 22nd 2015 at 6:30, the curtain will rise to show the documentary filmed about the Bash The Trash Legacy Project created and supervised by We Future Cycle in the Colonial Elementary School in Pelham. We are so excited and hope you can all join us for this event.
Also shown will be “Devide in Concord”, the tale of the battle to ban the plastic bottle.
The Pelham Picture house is located at 175 Wolfs Ln, Pelham, NY 10803.
We Future Cycle to present at Bedford 2020 “Beyond Waste” Fair
On May 13th at 6:30 to 8:30 pm, We Future Cycle is invited to be part of the Bedford 2020 Beyond Waste Fair. We will have an informational table as well as be part of a round table discussion.
We are looking forward to spreading our message to bring sustainability education into schools through hands-on source separation in the lunchrooms and buildings.
Pelham’s Colonial School In The Pelham Weekly Newspaper For Making A Difference
Colonial Fifth Graders Challenge School To “Bash The Trash”
Colonial’s fifth graders recently challenged the school to “Bash the Trash” and go litterless at lunch, reducing the trash collected every day. Parents were urged to use recyclable containers for food and drink (containers that could be returned home, washed and reused). At the end of the challenge, the fifth graders plan to tell the school how much the trash was reduced, based on data they collected. Their hope is to leave a “littlerless legacy” at Colonial when they graduate.
Please see full published “The Pelham Weekly” article here:
http://www.pelhamplus.com/news/schools/collection_b8f059da-ac9e-11e4-a787-2f29c82bf329.html
The Science Barge, a Floating Urban Farm in Yonkers
We Future Cycle and The Science Barge are working together to bring Environmental Education to Westchester Schools.
Creating Change is all about showing alternatives. That is exactly the mission of the Science Barge in Yonkers.
The Science Barge is a prototype sustainable urban farm developed by NY Sun Works and acquired by Groundwork Hudson Valley in October, 2008 to be operated as an environmental education center.
The Science Barge greenhouse, floating on the Hudson River, grows an abundance of fresh produce including tomatoes, melons, greens, and lettuce with zero net carbon emissions, zero pesticides, and zero runoff. All of the energy needed to power the Barge is generated by solar panels, wind turbines, and biofuels while the hydroponic greenhouse is irrigated solely by collected rainwater and purified river water, thus operating completely “off the grid.”
It is the only fully functioning demonstration of renewable energy supporting sustainable food production in New York. It is now docked in downtown Yonkers just north of the Yonkers Pier.
Check them out, they are fabulous!
http://www.groundworkhv.org/programs/science-barge/
2014….Giving Thanks To Great Opportunities for Environmental Change in Westchester
2014 was an action-packed year for We Future Cycle. We are looking proudly upon multiple TV, radio and other news outlet coverage stories of the environmental programs that we offer.
We thank New Rochelle’s Interim Superintendent, Dr. Jeffrey Korostoff, for boldly going where no one had gone before by fully supporting the program and implementing it in all of New Rochelle’s Elementary Schools.
We thank Maureen Caraballo, Treasurer for Hastings-on-Hudson School District, for being the major force to bring the program to Hastings’ schools.
We thank Paul Feiner, Supervisor of the Town of Greenburgh, for endorsing us to bring the program to all of Greenburgh’s school districts.
We thank the White Plains Sustainability Committee to endorse us and to recommend the program to White Plains schools. We are very pleased and excited to be presenting this program to the White Plains Administration in January.
We thank the City Council of New Rochelle for endorsing We Future Cycle programs and for working with us to bring the first Food Waste Composting Site to Westchester.
We thank Joseph Carvin, Supervisor of the Town of Rye, for endorsing the program and affiliating with us. Mr. Carvin is also founder of the organization “One World, United & Virtuous.”
We thank Catherine Parker, Westchester County Legislator and Chair of the Committee for Environment and Energy, for featuring our program at the Board of Legislators and the Westchester Environmental Summit, as well as for her continuous and outspoken support. She is the major force behind creating a Westchester-based solution for food waste composting.
We thank the Columbia University Capstone Program for recommending the implementation of the We Future Cycle School recycling program as part of the Zero Waste Initiative to the Town of Mamaroneck, Village of Mamaroneck, and the Village of Larchmont.
We thank the Greenburgh Nature Center for offering a meeting venue to present the program as well as many other earth-saving and thought-provoking environmental presentations.
We thank County Legislator Sheila Marcotte and James Maisano for honoring us with a Proclamation for creating and implementing the program at New Rochelle Trinity School. New Rochelle’s Trinity Elementary School is truly a leader, one of the first schools to implement with an exceptional administration.
We thank the Pelham Sustainability Committee EcoPel for featuring the program and for their efforts to bring it to the Pelham schools.
We thank the Westchester Municipal Offcials Association for endorsing the program and bringing it back as recommendation to their communities.
We thank all the people that support us in our work to bring sustainability and environmental education into the schools as a daily learning experience, so we can raise environmentally-literate children.
Charles Kettering said these famous words: “The world hates change, yet is has been the only thing that brought progress.” We could not agree more.
We Future Cycle 