blsyouthcan

1. www.blsyouthcan.org Founded in 2007, BLS Youth Climate Action Network (Youth CAN) is a student-led high school environmental club at Boston Latin School. It focuses on education, facilities improvement, and youth outreach. The Youth CAN network now has more than 20 different Youth CAN clubs in schools across eastern Massachusetts.

2. Topic Overview Landfills, Waste Management, & Recycling What Is Recycling? Recycling is the process by which waste is converted to reusable materials. This decreases the number of landfills and reduces the negative effects of disposing waste. What Is Zero-Sort Recycling? Zero Sort Recycling, sometimes referred to as single-stream recycling, is an alternative to traditional recycling. Instead of the general public sorting the recyclables into separate bins, the recyclables are collected into a single bin. From there, it is taken to a waste management facility, where it is sorted and recycled. This process makes recycling easier for the average person and less difficult for communities to oversee. By reducing waste, recycling helps decrease landfills and its negative effects.

3. Why? http://youtu.be/WxZg4t83Lx8 Youth CAN members created a video to explain the value of recycling.

4. Why? In Addition: • Back in 2012, Youth CAN had met with the Boston Public School’s Facilities department, who had suggested we start recycling at our school before moving onto other plans. • Boston Latin School was already recycling styrofoam and paper, but did not recycle other materials like plastic. Youth CAN members recognized the need for an easy way for the student population to do so. • At the time, Casella & the Boston Public School were seeking for schools to pilot a Zero-Sort Recycling program. BLS Youth CAN decided it would seek for BLS to be one of those schools. • BLS Youth CAN seeks to be a comprehensive model for other schools. As part of this, we wanted to document a successful Zero-Sort Recycling pilot and hopefully encourage recycling programs city-wide through our efforts.

5. Action Plan Overview 1) Petitioning: Win a Zero-Sort Recycling Pilot for Boston Public School from the City of Boston. • Collect signatures for a petition. • Present to the City of Boston’s Recycling Committee. 2) Execution: Create the Zero-Sort Recycling infrastructure in the school. • Network with BLS Recycling Club, school administration, custodians, and the City of Boston. • Create recycling boxes & signs. • Track impact before & after through trash weighing.

6. Action Plan Overview 3) Awareness & Outreach: • Encourage recycling through videos & signs. • Announce Zero-Sort Recycling and recycling skit at school assembly. • Have recycling competitions between the 3 lunches. 4) Extension: • Document results & present to others. • Petition for the continuation of Zero Sort Recycling at BLS, and expansion of Zero-Sort Recycling through all of BPS. • Pursue other means to decrease school waste.

7. ROLES • Petitioners - General Youth CAN members • Presenters – Youth CAN Senior Leadership • Multimedia Makers – Nhu Le, Rani Pan, Will Wen, Mikaela West, Julia Holtzman • City & Casella Liaison – Rebecca Park & Eshe Sherley • Quantifiers – Youth CAN Volunteers • Recyclables Collectors – Recycling Club & Custodians

8. Implementation Petition & Presentation • BLS students recycled bottles & cans for a month through parent volunteers, but decided the system couldn’t be maintained. • We collected over 600 student signatures, and presented the petition to the City’s Recycling Committee for Zero-Sort Recycling. • Boston chose BLS to host a Zero-Sort Recycling pilot for 3 months with Casella Waste Management.

9. Implementation Recycling Club & Custodians • Youth CAN has coordinated with the BLS Recycling Club to collect recycled material in classrooms after school. Students earn in-school volunteer service hours for participating. • Youth CAN & BLS Recycling Club continue to partner in future efforts (such as attaining a school digester). • Custodians & Youth CAN cooperated to create a new system for collecting and dumping lunch trash with Zero-Sort Recycling.

10. Implementation Barrels, Boxes, & Signs • Made Recycling “Do’s and Don’t’s” posters to inform the student body about the new recycling system. • Constructed and placed boxes (in classrooms), and barrels (in dining hall) for recyclables.

11. Implementation Trash Weighing • Youth CAN members coordinated with the custodians to determine change in amount of trash produced by school after implementation of the recycling pilot. • Volume was cut by 50% • Mass went from 581.4lbs/day to 438.7lbs/day

12. Implementation Advertising Zero-Sort Recycling • Youth CAN students encouraged students to recycle by: • Creating more than 50 hand-made signs and even more flyers. • Filming a video advertisement. • Having students dress up as “recycling police” & monitor the recycling bins.

13. Implementation Advertising Zero-Sort Recycling http://youtu.be/zHflScZtF-g A commercial BLS Youth CAN students shot to promote Zero-Sort Recycling.

14. Implementation Advertising Zero-Sort Recycling

15. Implementation Raising Awareness BLS Youth CAN mentors at the Philbrick Elementary School taught students about recycling and create a PSA. http://youtu.be/5Td5tTS2p8I

16. Implementation Raising Awareness • BLS Youth CAN hosted showings of “Trashed” and “Tapped”, documentaries about landfills & the water bottle industry, to encourage recycling.

17. Implementation School Assembly We hosted school assemblies with the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) to educate and inform students and faculty about the recycling pilot and encourage them to participate. At these assemblies, we created and performed a recycling skit with “Green Man” & a talking trash can.

18. Implementation School Competition • Youth CAN hosted a recycling competition between the school’s 3 lunch periods. We kept track on thermometer shown below. • The students of the winning lunch were given recycling badges. • Faculty most enthusiastic about recycling were awarded gift cards.

19. Implementation Documentation Sharing the process & materials on BLS Youth CAN’s website Youth CAN 2011 Energy Report http://blsyouthcan.org/BLS_Youth_C.A.N./Recycling.html http://blsyouthcan.org/BLS_Youth_C.A.N./Energy.html

20. Quantified Results • Trash cut by 50% in volume. • The school went from filling up 2 dumpsters per week to only 1 per week. • The school now fills 1.5 dumpsters per week with recyclables… more than we have! • Mass of trash generated decreased from 581.4 lbs/day to 438.7 lbs/day. • The pilot was such a success Youth CAN requested that the City of Boston supply additional large recycle bins and barrels. • Youth CAN members also made additional boxes for teacher offices and lounges.

21. Facilities Meeting • Youth CAN met for the second time with the BPS Facilities department to update them on the success of our pilot. • We received their congratulations for several awards. • The BPS Facilities department promised to collaborate with Youth CAN on continuing the success of the pilot, and other future initiatives (including school garden, lighting retrofit, and further reduction of Boston Latin School’s waste.

22. This is a letter sent to the BPS Facilities Department shortly before Youth CAN’s meeting with them. In it, we explained the success of the pilot and our desire to continue with Zero-Sort.

23. PEYA Award Ceremony • This year, Youth CAN was one of the ten groups to receive the President’s Environmental Youth Award (PEYA) for our hard work on greening our school. • We attended the awards ceremony at Faneuil Hall, where we performed our recycling skit for the attendees (which included city officials, corporations, and other schools).

24. City-Wide Implementation • After the pilot’s end, we appealed to Casella and asked for them to continue Zero Sort Recycling • They agreed. • Casella & BLS Youth CAN wrote a letter requesting the City of Boston to implement Zero Sort Recycling in all BPS schools. • Starting in 2014, the City of Boston will actualize this plan.

25. Challenges & What We Learned • Youth CAN members learned to: • Give professional presentations to city and school officials in order to advocate for their causes. • Network with various school and outside organizations to execute Zero-Sort Recycling pilot. • Engage fellow students and faculty through fun and interactive events advertising pilots.

26. Future Plans Digester • At the suggestion of Brian Keane, the president of the company Smart Power located in D.C., Youth CAN decided to pursue getting a digester for Boston Latin School to further cut waste. • A digester reduces food waste by composting food scraps. • Youth CAN contacted Gus Shumacher (of Wholesome Wave) about acquiring an anearobic digester for BLS. • Gus Shumacher said it was not possible, due to cost. • Youth CAN is still exploring the possibility of obtaining a digester with the BLS Recycling Club, the BPS Facilities Department, Phoebe Beierle (the Sustainability Coordinator for the BPS), and Casella Waste Management. • Paul Hardiman (of Casella) recently mentioned the possibility of that a digester could be leased to BLS at a low cost, if Youth CAN can get agreement from all the necessary parties.

28. -----Original Message-----From: Laura Dowd <lauramdowd@hotmail.com>To: cate arnold <catebarnold@aol.com>Sent: Tue, Oct 11, 2011 1:53 pmSubject: Paul HardimanHello Mr. Hardiman,  We wanted to thank you so much for coming to Boston Latin School to meet with us.  We would also like to reaffirm that we are very interested in getting a digester at the Boston Latin School!  It would be an amazing environmental and emissions reducing step to be able to compost all of Boston Latin School's food waste.   Please convey our thanks to Scott Chase for all the information he provided at our meeting. We are excited about the whole idea of the Boston Latin School become a demonstration case for public schools going to zero-waste, and composting their food waste, especially given that, as you point out, by 2014, existing legislation will have gone into effect mandating that food waste no longer go to landfills.  We thank you for this wonderful opportunity for Boston Latin School to serve as a leader in making a transition that everyone will have to find a way to make soon.  So, here is what we understood from our last meeting:  1) We need to set up a date for you to meet Shamil Mohammed, the Director of BPS Food Services, at the Boston Latin School, and also to observe a BLS lunch in operation at.  It will be critical to get BPS Food Services on board with the digester idea and get their approval for our proposed location for the digester and the new 96 gallon bins.  Could you please send us a few dates that you might be available to come to BLS for this meeting?  Lunches at BLS run from 11:22 - to 12:38 each day. 2) We know these things take time, but we hope to get going on it ASAP because we're entering this project in a competition that ends October 31st.  We'd like to be underway with our plan so that we can document it for the contest.  Besides, the sooner we get it going, the sooner we can get this up and running and stop putting BLS's food waste into landfills! . 4) We also like to figure out when we might go see the digester at One Financial, because we would still really like to see a functioning example of the digester. 5)  BLS Youth CAN students are currently working with a very supportive teacher in our school's art department to find a way to create signs to better identify what each of the existing barrels are for at lunch (until we can get the new barrels) but we are very excited about the prospect of having the new 96 gallon square recycling bins in the alcoves along the back of the cafeteria in the near future.  We think that that change, along with adding big recycling bins for the hallways will really increase the amount we're recycling at BLS and bring us closer to zero-waste.  If you have any sense of a timeline as to when we might be able to get these bins and what kind of cost it might involve, that would be great to know.  We've started our equal exchange fair trade fundraiser to help pay for the cost of leasing the digester and the bins.  We'll be selling until just before Thanksgiving. 6.) We're also making plans to connect with our own BLS Recycling Club (you met their president and some of their student members during our last meeting with you) to offer our help to them in making sure that there are labeled recycling boxes in every classroom and office at BLS and that each is clearly labeled "single-stream recycling" with instructions to include all paper, plastic, aluminum, etc. We have a teacher at BLS who is willing to laminate signs for all the boxes, so that's something we can easily do, and our custodians are willing to save copy paper boxes for us. 7.) We're excited about the idea of having you help us do a "recycling audit" for the Boston Latin School.  It makes sense to get an accurate picture of what is actually happening at the school in terms of what we're actually recycling, as a first step in identifying the really particular sorts of changes we need to make to increase recycling.  It will also really help with documenting our progress.  We're happy to work with you to schedule the audit as well. 8.)  Finally, we're are scheduling a movie day next week where we will show the movie "Trashed" to raise awareness about how much trash Americans generate and to encourage students to make efforts to reduce waste.  We're promoting the movie event with students dressed in Trash Bags who will be walking around in the lunches (pending the headmaster's permission) with signs on them inviting folks to come see the movie. I guess that's it for now.   Please let us know if you have any questions, or if there's anything else that we should be doing to support these important initiatives.  We're looking forward to hearing from you! Sincerely, Laura Dowd, Class II Senior LeadershipBoston Latin School Youth Climate Action Network 

29. Future Plans Alcove • BLS Youth CAN plans to revamp the current recycling layout in the cafeteria by : • removing the disposal bins cluster in the center of the room. • Installing larger 96-gallons disposal bins in ten alcoves around the room. Students would be able to properly dispose of food waste, liquid waste, recyclables, and other wastes. • The plan would: • Make it easier for students to recycle. • Decrease the workload of custodians. • Add composting to the current system. Recycle-Bowl • BLS Youth CAN is currently participating in the National Recycle-Bowl. • Youth CAN & BLS Recycling Club will be collaborating in: • encouraging recycling next month • quantifying monthly recycling output. • It will run from October 17th to November 12th.

30. Project Gallery

31. On Feb 7, 2010, at 9:28 AM, catebarnold@aol.com wrote: Thanks for the clarification Alicia, that's very helpful. Since Boston Latin School already has a paper recycling program in operation as well as an Abitibi Paper recycling dumpster, what BLS Youth CAN students have been most invested in is getting grant funding for a single stream recycling pilot at BLS (so far unsuccessful). We want to add can and bottle recycling school-wide to demonstrate that it can be done and really radically change the picture. Currently individual teachers are having students bring cans and bottles to them and we're taking them home to our own recycling. It's a method of necessity for those of us who can't stand to see the cans and bottles in the trash, but we're no where near recycling anything but the smallest percentage of the oceans of cans and bottles that go into the trash every day, and it's certainly not a very sustainable method. That's the piece Boston Latin School would most like to be considered for: the "Casella Single Stream Container" & Pilot opportunity. Youth CAN students and supporting faculty have committed to ensuring the success of the single-stream pilot should you choose to run it at BLS. We will promote, oversee, and document it's trajectory, blog about it, whatever would be most helpful. Let us know if you need anything further from us (eg. a petition or whatever might be useful as you attempt to make decisions regarding which schools should be doing what.) Thanks for all the time and hard work you all are investing to make this happen! Best, Cate Arnold, Faculty Advisor Boston Latin School Youth Climate Action Network www.blsyouthcan.org www.youthcannetwork.org catebarnold@aol.com

35. Awareness Posters