This face book page ( ttps://www.facebook.com/newpaltzrecycles) was just shared with me. It contains the most amazing and heart warming stories of how students can truly make a huge difference. They have organized “Move Out Programs” to reclaim all the things that accumulate in a dorm room over a year but may not need to be dragged home to mom and dad’s.
They organized “Recycling Carnevals” and “Bike Swaps” Just incredible, check them out.
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.
Continue reading New Rochelle Elementary School Reduces Garbage to 2 Handful Through Recycling
On April 29th, 2014 New Rochelle’s Trinity School was publicly awarded a Westchester County Proclamation, signed by Legislator James Maisano, Legislator Sheila Marcotte, and Legislator Catherine Parker. This is a wonderful recognition of the schools never faltering efforts to bring sustainability to the district through consistent teaching and doing.
This award is long in the making. In September of 2011, Anna Giordano brought the school lunch recycling program to the administration and the PTA, then under the leadership of Ines Bolufer-Laurentie, tirelessly implemented it. The PTA spent countless lunches teaching the children and thus creating a culture of environmental awakening.
The School Lunch Recycling Program is very simple, instead of teaching the children to “just throw out your garbage” after lunch, they are taught to separate their lunchroom waste into different recyclable categories. This process reduces and condenses the amount tremendously. Once all the recyclable packaging, compostable food left overs and left over liquids are sorted out, there is actually very little, that does not fall into these categories.
Trinity was not the only school to implement the program in September of 2011, but it was the only one, where the school administration persevered despite of the total lack of support from Central Administration, foremost the Director of Facilities.
Fortunately, Central Administration under the leadership of Dr. Jeffrey Korostoff is now fully supporting the program and New Rochelle is looking to have all of its schools fully converted to source separation and compostable trays by September of 2014. This could not have been accomplished if it had not been for the unwavering determination of the Trinity Administration Anthony DiCarlo and Inas MorsiHogans.
I applaud them both. This proclamation is well deserved.
The Food waste in the US is staggering, actually beyond imagination.
Check out this super interesting blog.
http://www.sustainableamerica.org/blog/we-survived-for-6-months-on-discarded-food/
On March 31, 2014, I was so proud to present the School Lunch Recycling Program to the Westchester County Board of Legislators, Committee for Energy and Environment.
Legislator Catherine Parker invited Anne Jeffe Holmes, Director of Programming at the Greenburgh Nature Center, Jean Bonhatal from the Cornell Waste Management Institute and myself, Anna Giordano, to share programs in place in Westchester working towards the final frontier of Food Waste Management.
Here is the video coverage of the event.
The Legislators were very interested and assured us that they will carefully look at how they can create infrastructure in Westchester to facilitate local Food waste management.
Right now, only Suburban Carting offers commercial food waste hauling to an out-of-county facility.
But food waste is black gold and we really need to keep it in Westchester to benefit from it.
Every lunchroom in the school district has left over food, but so far, this food has gone into the garbage. Always the same concerns against donating it to local soup kitchens were raised. Who would pick up? We are not allowed to donate tax payers money. What if someone gets sick, then we would get sued.
Melissa Passarelli, Principal of Webster Elementary School, shared with me that she found it particularly upsetting that left over milk on Friday, with a short date of Sunday, could not be donated on Friday to either afternoon program children or other agencies. Instead, that milk is being stored over the weekend, just to be thrown out on Monday.
I learned recently about a wonderful organization called
“RockandWrapitup.org”
This organization has recovered thousands of pounds of cooked, but unserved food, or short dated foods such as milk or bread before a school break to give to local agencies. They have an extensive network of vetted and accredited agencies that serve the needy.
In 2008 Public Law 110-247 was enacted to encourage food donation to non profit organizations that provide assistance to food insecure people in the US.
All Donors are protected from liability through the 1996 Bill Emmerson Good Samaritan Law 104-210, 110 Stat.3011)
I have shared this program with New Rochelle’s Superintendent Jeffrey Korostoff, who was immediately on board to see what needs to be done for our schools to connect into the system. Way to go!
I would like to thank the Westchester Municipal Officials Association for hosting this meeting.
Thanks to the introduction of the Town Clerk of the Town of Greenburgh, I was invited to present the School Lunch Recycling Program today to many leaders of Westchester’s municipalities.
In attendance were municipal officials of White Plains, Yonkers, Bronxville, Peekskill, Tarrytown, Ossining, Mamaroneck, Rye Brook, Town of Greenburgh and others.
I presented the cost savings, educational and environmental benefits that this program brings to schools and how these benefits will be carried back into the homes and thus back into the municipalities. All members in attendance were very interested and supportive and voted unanimously to endorse the School Lunch Recycling Program.
I am very grateful for that support. I am looking forward to working with these municipalities and school districts to make source separation, school food composting and recycling the norm in Westchester’s schools. For our children and for our future.
New York City is
going all out when it comes to Recycling……. but New Rochelle is not following.
Apart from Glen Island park, recycling bins at New Rochelle Parks are non existent. None of the ball fields are sporting recycling cans, none of the playgrounds, none of the tennis courts.
The Source separation law is in effect since the late 80ies and here we are in 2013 and there are still no Recycling cans in sight.
How can we teach our children about recycling if no logistics are provided.
Especially at the ball fields, because, guess what, there are mainly bottles and cans discarded there. I did a survey and found 800 beverage containers per weekend day at the ALMS and Ward Ball fields alone. And no recycling can!
Here is an article on what Central Park is doing, it should be an example to New Rochelle.
Central Park recycling to get an overhaul:
Continue reading New Rochelle Park and Rec. Recycling Practically Non Existent
As America’s culture of convenience continues to flourish, single-cup coffee makers have become increasingly popular among coffee drinkers. But beneath those expedient one-cup coffee pods lies a growing environmental problem.
With New Rochelle being a fast paced, suburban environment, it is a prime market for these kind of convenience driven machines.
“These things aren’t readily recyclable, if recyclable at all,” said Darby Hoover, senior resources specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Anytime you’ve got this kind of small, single-use packaging option, especially when there are clearly alternatives, it just leads me to question why you would promote that system over another that works just as well for many applications.” Continue reading Coffee Convenience, A Growing Environmental Problem that Costs Us All Dearly
We Future Cycle 