In honor of Earth Day, the School District’s 10 campuses participated in the first annual District-wide recycling competition during the week of April 18-22.
Each school’s goal: To be the school that reduced the most landfill waste, and produced the cleanest recycling and compost streams.
At most schools, student leaders, key staff and parent volunteers came out in force to help students recycle and compost carefully, and reduce landfill.
La Ballona Elementary won the award for standing out as the elementary school site that reduced the most landfill waste during the week.
La Ballona also produced the cleanest waste streams, both pre- and post- competition.
Farragut Elementary was recognized for being the “most improved” over the course of the competition, thanks in large part to student leaders from Karen Lanier’s Global Sustainability course.
El Rincon and El Marino earned special recognition for their remarkable student, staff and volunteer leadership.
Linwood Howe Elementary was honored for its school-wide student leadership program.
The Office of Child Development won friendly competition against the Adult School and Culver Park.
Culver City Middle School and Culver City High School tied. They are being saluted for their remarkable student and staff leadership that is building awareness about the importance of reducing people’s collective carbon footprint.
During Earth Week, the high school hosted two special lunchtime events: Ballona Creek Renaissance Club-sponsored Recycled Art activity and an Environmental Protection Agency -sponsored Food Waste Audit.
The creative recycled art event (held on Monday and Friday) featured colorfully painted plastic water bottle flowers. This attracted ample participation from both girls and boys.
The USDA estimates that 31 percent of the overall food supply in the United States goes uneaten. This is a grave misallocation of resources with significant economic and environmental impacts. The EPA is now reaching out to schools to help raise awareness of this problem and to help create solutions.
Talk About Waste
The Earth Day EPA Food Waste Audit at the high school was supported by 12 student volunteers and 48 other student participants.
Of the 48 meals assessed, 9.5 pounds of leftover food and 35 unopened food items were weighed and counted.
From this small sample at the high school over the academic year (180 days) 1,676 pounds of potentially compostable leftover food is not eaten, while 6,300 potentially donatable unopened items are thrown away.
Key recommendations from the EPA and high school students to reduce food waste at the District includes:
(1) Educate students, faculty and operations on food resources and the importance of food resource conservation; (2) Adjust recipes of the top three leftover/unopened food/beverage items; (3) Establish share tables for whole fruits, beverages and unopened items, and donate leftovers; (4) Before debuting a new menu item, conduct a taste test on a group of students; (5) Give each menu item a clever-sounding name, in Spanish and English, such as: X-Ray Vision Carrots/Zanahorias de Rayos X.
Next Wednesday, another EPA food waste audit will be conducted at the Middle School. Results of both audits will be available at: CCUSD.org/Sustainability.
Ms. Cunningham, the School District’s Sustainability Program coordinator, may be contacted at Shea@BalancedApproach.net.
