Weekly Green Audit: School Waste Reduction

Sorry about the absent green audit yesterday – I tried to log on and WordPress said nope, not gonna work for you. I’ll post an extra audit post later today or one on Saturday to make up for it.

In any case, this week we’re discussing greening your school. One of the bigger issues schools have is material waste. Paper waste, supply waste, and related school materials are a huge burden on the environment. You can work with your fellow classmates on this green audit, talk to your teacher, or even go higher up.

Mainly though, a good audit is nothing more than keen observations. To green audit your classroom or entire school waste, here are some things to look at.

Paper waste:

1. How much paper is being used on a daily basis in just your classrooms alone? Count the pieces of paper you use plus the pieces your teacher hands you. Times that by the number of students in your room. Now times it by the number of kids in the entire school – is the number staggering? One report notes that a school in New York, in just one year, used 28 pounds of paper per each student and teacher in the school.
2. Are both sides of paper utilized? This means that homework assignments, worksheets, art paper, and teacher handouts. You can count any paper item. One fun experiment is to ask your entire class to simply make a pile all week of all the paper used in class. Imagine how big that pile will be.
3. Is any of that paper recycled?
4. How is paper recycled at your school. Are there bins available in each classroom? The school office, the library, and in common areas?
5. Are there still paper towels in your bathrooms? A better choice are air dryers, but not all schools have them.
6. What else have you observed that constitutes paper waste at your school?

Guess what – we haven’t even mentioned text books yet. How much more paper do text books create, do you think?
Basic supplies:

1. Make a list of all the school supplies that you are required to have. Here are some examples: backpack, crayons, glue, pens, pencils, notebooks, paints, markers, and containers for storing all of this.
2. Which school supplies are healthy for the environment? School Waste Reduction
3. Which are not?
4. Which supplies can be exchanged for healthier supplies?

For example, some regular old crayons are made with petroleum – that’s a non-renewable resource. There are other options, such as beeswax crayons.

Many glues and paints contain chemicals and icky stuff that’s not healthy for anyone to breathe in on a regular basis.

Once you have your information – for instance, your class uses 200 sheets of paper a day, the point is to use less paper, use up the paper you have, and to recycle. With each question in a green school audit there is also a solution. Obviously that’s a lot of info for one post. First off you should discuss your audit findings with your classmates, teachers, and higher school officials. See what everyone else has to say.

The next part of the plan is education. To learn more about the above issues, including how to make change occur take a look at the following resources:

The Energy Information Administration’s Kid’s Page has a great resource that can teach you all about where paper comes from, how to recycle, why to recycle, and how much energy it takes to make paper.

Your number one read concerning less toxic school supplies should be – Toxic Nation Guide to Less Toxic School Supplies. This is by far the most simple, yet, best resource I’ve seen about safe and sustainable school supplies.
Green Apple School Supply: offers green school supply options over traditional – everything from notebooks to recycled rulers.

Are Art Supplies Toxic?: A great article for parents that explains how to read art supply labels. Now you can know which supplies are safe and which are toxic.