White Bear Lake Area Schoolchildren, Teachers Stockpile Supplies

School supplies are starting to hit store shelves around Washington County, but some teachers in the White Bear Lake Area School District started their stockpiles before school even let out.

That’s thanks, in part, to an effort to refocus end of the year locker clean outs with a little help from county representatives. Typically, everything ends up in the garbage when students at the 14 district schools empty their lockers in the last few days of the year.

Dan Roeser, WBLAS building operations supervisor, said that results in a lot of waste, to the point where a dumpster fills up within an hour. In 2015, Roeser piloted a diversion program at two WBLAS schools with help from an educational consultant, and collaboration with Ramsey and Washington counties.

When students sorted their waste into piles of reusable or recyclable items, the amount of trash was cut by about 75 percent. Following the success of those pilots, Roeser asked the principals in the district if any would be interested in participating in a similar program. The response was unanimous: Every principal wanted his or her entire school to do a waste sort at the end of the year.

“Students are aware that everything thrown in the garbage goes into the waste stream; it does not magically disappear,” said Otter Lake teacher Thom Green. “They realize that every object thrown away will have an impact. By putting their used school supplies in the reuse buckets, they know they are lessening the waste stream, and also know that someone who is in need will benefit. It is a simple but effective way to help children to give back to the community. Instead of throwing things away becoming second nature, helping the Earth and helping others becomes second nature.”

With recycling containers set up at sorting stations every 30 to 40 lockers in the halls, and monitors, both student and professional, to help guide the sorting, White Bear students got to work clearing out the old before leaving for the summer.

Roeser and Dan Schoepke, senior environmental specialist for Washington County, took posts at the high school, offering guidance as students picked through the items accumulated over the school year. Students at the elementary schools, too young for lockers, did their part by cleaning out their desks.

The resulting pens, pencils, glue sticks, binders, notebook paper, and more were taken to the teachers lounges, where staff could take anything they thought might be useful for the next school year. Leftovers were taken to summer school sites. Roeser said the extra items offered teachers a chance to gather supplies for students who might not have the resources to come to school with all the necessary materials.

Sorting locker waste not only created a cache of recycled materials, but also produced a cost savings for the school district. Ordinarily, it takes nearly a week for the district to finish scheduling and executing extra scheduled trash collection on all the extra waste generated.

This year, thanks to additional recycling pick-ups scheduled at about a third of the cost of trash collection, there wasn’t nearly the added expense associated with locker clean outs. In response to the interest and support for the waste diversion program, the district plans to continue using the sorting stations at locker clean outs in the years to come.

For more information about waste diversion programs for your Washington County school or community organization, contact Senior Environmental Specialist Dan Schoepke at 651-430-6655.

The above content was provided by Washington County. Photo courtesy of Flickr: https://goo.gl/hSt9gK