Washington-Hoyt Elementary School was awarded a Terry Husseman Sustainable Schools Award from the Washington Department of Ecology for the work the staff and students have done through the Green Schools program.
A small group of PTA members and teachers launched the Green Schools program in the fall of 2007 with assistance from the city of Tacoma’s Solid Waste Department and the EnviroChallenger program and the support of the principal, teachers and other staff members. Their first goal was to reduce solid waste by reducing the amount of material used and increasing recycling.
The city of Tacoma helped the Washington-Hoyt do an audit of solid waste to see how much waste the school generated before they implemented the program.
Each classroom saw a recycling presentation on the do’s and don’ts of recycling. Teachers appointed a recycling monitor each week for their own classroom. Recycling of milk cartons began in February 2008 during the fourth- and fifth-grade lunches. Two fourth or fifth graders volunteered to serve as Green Partners for the week. This recycling program saved 9,000 milk cartons for recycling that would have been consigned to the landfill.
To cut down on the use of paper, the main office staff and the PTA set goals to make more use of ConnectED messages, send memos by e-mail and reduce the size of memos sent home. The PTA put the school newsletter online. Each classroom has a purple bin for storing paper that can be reused. These efforts saved 40,000 sheets of paper, and $1,200 in photocopying costs.
The program has given the school a chance to build community with such events as litter pick-ups each spring with more than 60 volunteers. Families created holiday cards at a family night workshop using recycling materials. More than 700 people attended the school barbecue which was a completely waste-free event—nothing was thrown away. Everything was re-used or sent for recycling or composing.
The waste audit at the end of the 2007-08 school year showed Washington-Hoyt had cut the amount of trash by 1.5 tons, which the city Solid Waste Department estimated this saved $200 in waste hauling fees. The school recycled more than 11,000 gallons of materials which the school does not have to pay to send them to the landfill.
The program also allows the students to see themselves as positive agents of change, said Emmy Murphy, second-grade teacher who gave an update to the school board on Washington-Hoyt’s efforts.
In addition to helping in the various efforts, students created a mascot, Forest Fox, for the program, and created recycled artwork that was chosen to advertise a show in a city art gallery. They also researched the environmental impacts of using plastic bottles for water.
Students also identified a source for the school’s relatively high water consumption. The culprit was the water tanks in the boys’ bathrooms. With the help of custodians, the flow of water to the tanks was decreased, which should reduce water use by some 700,000 gallons a year at a savings of almost $1,200.
Washington-Hoyt is reaching out to neighboring schools to encourage them to join in the Green Schools efforts. Likely Sherman and Lowell elementary schools will come on board. As more schools join the program, more students will be empowered and find ways to save money and resources. In the words of the student who designed the Forest Fox mascot, “My powers can save the world and yours can too!”