Conducting a waste audit is an excellent way for students and adults alike to realize how much “trash” is thrown away each day. My students and I, with the guidance and equipment of the lovely Katy Mike Smaistrla, Education Coordinator at the Earthways Center in St Louis, did a weeklong analysis of what is thrown away at our school, and the results provided awesome learning opportunities and project potential.

Long before the waste audit, which took place close to the end of the semester, my students went on a field trip to the Fred Weber landfill. There, they saw where our trash goes, how much space our metro community needs for its trash, and learned how a landfill is structured.

The waste audit itself took about a week. During that time, kids interviewed building officials, weighed and sorted classroom trash, and analyzed purchasing by the school. The counted copiers, students, fax machines, soda machines, printers, and dumpsters. Finally, they donned jumpsuits, gloves, and goggles and dove right into the dumpster to collect bags of trash, which were sorted into individual components and weighed.

Their findings were shocking. An overwhelmingly large amount of what we threw away can be reduced, reused, or recycled, and our school was doing none of that. We found blank paper in the trash, unopened snacks, and cardboard, paper, cans, and plastics that could easily be recycled. We found bagged yard waste, enormous amounts of styrofoam and disposable utensils, unopened sodas and snacks, and perfectly good books. Our Abitibi paper-recycling bin? Empty.

The students were now invested. They realized that they throw away a lot of stuff, and when they throw stuff away, it doesn’t disappear—it has to go somewhere. The next task was to create an implement a project that would, in some way, make our school more sustainable. Because the waste audit was fresh in the students minds, their projects focused on solid waste reduction and reusing.

In only a few shorts weeks, the students were able to start a school-wide paper recycling program, designed and run by students. They also designated one of the school computer printers as a “draft printer,” printing on the blank side of previously used paper. Finally, students are currently working on recycling 20oz plastic bottles (the plastic most commonly discarded at our school) through Terra Cycle. Teachers and students are working together to decrease our waste, and later in the spring, we will do another waste audit to measure the impact these projects are having.