The Trash Audit at Blix

A group of parents with a little support from a Tacoma Schools Board member are trying to convince the school district to recycle more. If we can show it will save money, the board member will present it to the board. So, we are auditing the trash from a day at an elementary school, a middle school and a high school. Here we are at Blix, a great little elementary school in a pretty challenging neighborhood. It was a busy day, going through trash and helping the kids dispose of their lunch garbage in the right bins (we are very hopeful we can start sending our food waste to composting, instead of the trash). If we can do composting and have really good recycling of paper and plastics, we can reduce the roughly 350 pounds of trash generated by the 400 kid elementary school each day to something like 54 pounds of trash. That could save the district good money, perhaps even $100,000. We still need to audit a few more schools and get the city to let us do a pilot composting program, but it could come to fruition. Probably won't, but it really is worth trying. I roped my Mom and Father-in-law into coming and helping sort trash. Yeah family. -Gerrit