On November 7th, the C3 Club conducted a lunchroom waste audit of the 7th & 8th grade lunch period. C3 Members separately collected waste and recycling from the 7th and 8th grade students.
Once the waste was collected, it was taken outside and spread out on tarps by the school dumpsters. The waste was then separated into categories such as: paper, cardboard, plastics, non-compostable food waste, and compostable food waste.
The results were astonishing!
We discovered the amount of waste that is coming out of our lunchroom each year is equivalent to 3-4 school bus loads of waste. Our estimates show that Hurley School is putting out 86,625lbs of lunchroom waste each year. Our milk carton recycling produces 20,475lbs of recycling each year out the lunchroom door.
In analyzing the results, we found that if the school began composting the compostable material that comes out of the lunchroom that would reduce our waste by 33,075lbs per year. If we are able to reduce the non-compostable lunchroom waste, we could reduce our total waste by 37,013lbs per year. The lunchroom already resuses the lunch trays but we might be able to find a way to reuse the plastic materials as well. Since we started recycling the milk cartons, our waste has already been reduced. However, we could begin recycling paper tray covers and other plastic materials to reduce our overall waste by 5,119lbs per year.
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