Looking for ways to reduce your environmental impact this holiday season? Ditch the wrapping paper on this year’s gifts and reduce your paper waste.
PAR Recycle Works: Improving Lives & the Environment
What do environmental sustainability, electronic waste, and the criminal justice system have in common? Employment opportunities in sustainability-related fields, known as “green jobs,” can help formerly incarcerated individuals to reenter society and successfully build their careers. Since 2016, People Advancing Reintegration (PAR) Recycle Works, a non-profit organization based in North Philadelphia, provides valuable job training and practical skills to formerly incarcerated people.
Inspire Students with Hydroponic Kits
Disrupting the Throwaway Mindset: Moving Towards a “Circular Economy”
So--you might have heard the term circular economy thrown around before, but what exactly does it mean for schools? Proponents of a circular economy hope to combat our cognitively engrained throw-away culture, and focus instead on keeping materials in use for as long as possible. Schools have ample opportunity to engage with the circular economy framework, and ultimately align their actions with their organizational values.
PAR Recycle Works: Recycling Electronics & Restoring Lives
PAR Recycle Works (People Advancing Reintegration), a nonprofit electronics recycler, provides transitional employment to people returning from prison. This Germantown-based organization diverted over 250 tons of electronic waste (or “e-waste”) from the landfill. E-waste contains materials that can be upcycled or reused if recycled properly, such as the copper in wires or the gold in computer motherboards.
Steps to Avoid “Forever Chemicals:” PFAS in Our Environment
Due to their persistence and connection to serious potential health effects, the chemical compounds known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or “fluorinated additives have come under increasing scrutiny from toxicologists, ecologists, and regulators over the past two decades. Among other uses, these chemicals have been added to single-use foodware products in order to impart water- and grease-resistance.
Haverford College’s Green Initiatives: from Elevated Arboretum Status to Dining Hall Changes
First Graders Make a Difference with Waste Free Lunches
During the beginning of school last year, first grade students in Brooke Donovan’s class conducted a classroom waste audit. “We took a close look at the amount of trash we generated after one lunch. Students counted the number of yogurt cups, plastic forks and knives, juice boxes and other trash that we generated” she noted. “Then they discussed what they could do to reduce this waste.”
Rifrullo Cafe: A Sustainable Restaurant Case Study
Rifrullo Cafè in Brookline, Massachusetts recently earned 3-star Certified Green Restaurant® recognition from the Green Restaurant Association (GRA). In order to reach this sustainability milestone, Rifrullo owner Colleen Suhanosky took action in a range of different focus areas. In this article, we hope to expand upon Rifrullo’s practices and help other restaurants get a better idea of how they can take steps toward a smaller environmental impact as well.
Rifrullo Cafe earns Sustainability Certification from the Green Restaurant Association
If the neon pink couch and a James Beard award-winning chef wasn’t enough to draw you into Rifrullo Café before, the Brookline eatery has a new reason to warrant a visit. As of this month, Rifrullo Café had achieved the 3 star Certified Green Restaurant® recognition by the Green Restaurant Association.
Top Tips For Getting started with Sustainable Food Services
Shipley Links Compassion to Sustainability
Red Clay School Goes Green: Cooke Elementary’s Waste Audit
How much waste does one elementary school produce each lunch period? This was the question that motivated William F. Cooke Elementary School’s Talented and Gifted (TAG) program students to conduct a waste audit on March 13th. Realizing that they needed to know what they were up against before they could make a change, the students of the TAG program at Cooke set out to find exactly what was in their waste
Cooke Elementary students predict how much waste they generate in the cafeteria before weighing each bag as part of their waste audit.
Teacher Christine Szegda received a grant from the Delaware Pathways to Green Schools Program. Ms. Szegda enlisted school sustainability consultants, Mary Ann Boyer and Sam York of Boyer Sudduth Environmental Consultants (BSEC) to help plan and run the audit. Together, they set the date for the first waste audit on March 13th and developed an agenda for the day.
When the day came, Ms Szegda’s TAG students, the Cooke Elementary Custodial staff, BSEC, and parent volunteers came together to make the day a success. The fact that it was chili day did not deter the TAG students, who eagerly investigated the waste in order to find the information that would let them develop an action plan for reducing waste.
What the students found was staggering: the school’s 653 students in grades K - 5 produced 153 pounds of trash and 13 pounds of recycling from just one day of cafeteria waste, and 33.4 pounds of liquid waste from emptied water and milk bottles. Using these numbers, we can estimate that in one week, the school produces 653 pounds of trash, 65 pounds of recycled materials, and 167 pounds of liquid waste. Imagine what those numbers are in a school year? But this is only a single school! As parent volunteer Lisa Call said, “Imagine how much is wasted in Delaware alone, not to mention the rest of the country.”
These numbers motivated TAG students to immediately pull together plans for how to reduce the amount of waste produced. Ms. Szegda and her students will develop an action plan for making changes to reduce waste and increase recycling. They will implement changes and conduct a second waste audit in the spring to compare their results with this first one. According to one student, "We want the cafeteria to stop using styrofoam lunch trays. They get used once and then sit in a landfill for thousands of years after!”
Students were surprised by how much food was thrown away each day. “After combing through unopened snack bags, unpeeled bananas, and half eaten lunches,” noted Ms Szegda, “they had a real ah-ha moment.” The students learned that the average American throws out 4.4 pounds of trash a day. After seeing the food waste, students began to think about more sustainable and affordable solutions. Giving students only as much food as they will eat and encouraging students to use the "share bin" would help reduce the amount of food that would end up in a landfill each day.
The students found some positive data too: almost everything that was put into the recycling was recyclable. They now know, however, just how big their task is. Over the coming weeks, Ms. Szedga and her students will look more closely at waste and help teach others about what they can do to lessen their environmental footprint. The students will review the data from the audit and develop an action plan for reducing the waste. Ms Szedga reflected, “Making effective change always takes hard work, but I’m sure the students will use their creative energy and enthusiasm to show others how to make Red Clay a greener place.”
Article submitted by Sam York, intern of Boyer Sudduth Environmental Consultants.
Friends' Central School Students Conduct Dining Hall Waste Audits, Find Surprising Results
PAISBOA's Grant Inspires NFA to Reduce Waste
Norwood Fontbonne Academy's Collaborative Waste Initiative reduced school waste thanks to a grant from PAISBOA.
Taking a Bite Out of Waste
Compost 101: Ancillae-Assumpta Academy Does it Right
Ancillae-Assumpta Academy composts all of its dining room waste with support from their students and faculty. Ancillae-Assumpta’s green initiatives include solar panels, school gardens, outdoor education, to name a few. However, the school decided to do even more. Boyer Sudduth Environmental Consultants lead facilitated meetings with the faculty and administration to identify sustainability goals. Food Service Coordinator Sarah Wade took on composting all food waste generated by students and staff.
Lower School Girls are Zero Waste Heroes
In 2012, the SCH Academy lower school for girls identified a problem: food waste and recyclables were too often getting tossed into the large grey trash bins in the cafeteria instead of being thoughtfully separated into the compost bucket and blue recycling bins. With support from the science teachers and faculty sustainability committee, the 2nd and 3rd grade students began a “design thinking” process to identify the specific problems with cafeteria waste and to brainstorm solutions.
Why Compost?
PAISBOA Members Learn About Reducing Cafeteria Waste
On April 27, 2016 PAISBOA's Sustainability Affinity Group gathered to hear how to "Reduce your Environmental Footprint: One Bite at a Time" at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy (SCH). Sustainability consultants Mary Ann Boyer and Anne Sudduth of Boyer Sudduth Environmental Consultants and SCH science teachers, Marianne Maloy and Carie Szalay, used SCH's zero waste initiative as a case study.
