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Lauds for LAUSD on Waste Reduction
From lunch waste to paper waste—schools make tons of waste and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is no different. However, by thinking outside the box, the District has cut their waste stream by half in a little over five years, saving more than $3 million dollars annually. As a result of these efforts, the District was honored as the WasteWise School/School District winner for 2006.
Cafeterias, classrooms, and even school buses have all been successful targets for waste reduction efforts. For example, instead of purchasing new school bus tires, existing tires are retreaded, where the outside “tread” of the tire is removed and replaced with a new tread. Through retreading, the District has extended the life of their tires and prevented approximately 100 tons of tire waste.
Now in its seventh year, the District’s “Offer versus Serve” food program allows students to choose which foods to eat rather than have it automatically served. By cutting down on food disposal costs and avoided food purchasing, this program has saved the District more than $600,000 and prevented the creation of 13,000 tons of food waste last year alone.
LAUSD’s recycling efforts in 2006 yielded significant environmental and energy savings benefits. Using our WAste Reduction Model (WARM), we calculated LAUSD’s recycling efforts avoided the creation of greenhouse gases equivalent to taking 2,000 cars off the road for a year.
LAUSD recently adopted a goal to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills by 70 percent by 2020. The District plans to start recycling polystyrene food trays and improve their paper recycling program in order to reach that goal.
LAUSD’s recycling and waste reduction initiatives exemplify the types of activities encouraged by our own Resource Conservation Challenge within the national priority area of Municipal Solid Waste and Recycling.
For More Information:
- EPA's Resources for Waste Education
- EPA's Environmental Education Web area
- Earn National Recognition – Schools or school districts implementing or expanding a waste reduction program can gain national recognition through initiatives such as EPA's WasteWise program.