As a part of CVSan’s Green Ribbon Schools Program, on Friday, January 20^th, Marshall Elementary School completed its first ever waste audit.  CVSan staff and the Marshall team of 6 students and 1 teacher had a great time sorting through 1 day’s worth of garbage from the school to see what could actually have been placed in the recycling or organics carts. 

In this fun learning experience, students found that out of 44 gallons of garbage from the day before (a small amount from a school of this size), 75% was actually garbage.  Therefore, only 25% of the previous day’s garbage could have gone in the recycling or organics cart.  This is quite impressive since typically a school waste audit results in about 65% of the previous day’s garbage that could have been recycled or composted.

With Marshall’s new program, they have small garbage cans to show how little garbage there really is at school. Also, with a great support team of students, lunch supervisors, Teacher Meghan Mar and Custodian Darrell Lee, they are making high recycling and composting look easy.  Great job to Marshall Elementary for continuing to reduce waste at school!