By the Action Team at Steinmetz Career and Leadership Academy in Schenectady, NY. 

The problem we are trying to solve as a school, at Steinmetz, is reducing our footprint, or amount of waste we generate.

In an effort to reduce our waste we are doing many things. We’re making boxes to give out to every classroom to encourage glass, plastic, and aluminum recycling. In every class room we have paper recycling boxes, and larger paper containers on every floor, which are brought out for pick up every 2 weeks. At Steinmetz, most work is sent electronically, over the internet, most students have laptops, instead of handing in hand-written work, and this saves a lot of paper also. We made an effort to take Styrofoam trays out of our cafeteria. We advertise and create posters, power points and even music to educate and encourage students to reduce, reuse, and recycle more often.

To get permission, our staff members made calls to the school district offices, and told them we want to reduce our waste. The school district was supportive, but didn’t fully understand, not realizing the fact that paper trays will cost more money, and that’s where we ran into problems. Staff also got a hold of Cornell University Cooperative Extension of Schenectady, who will very soon, be sending us 10 recycling bins.

We faced some challenges with the Styrofoam trays. We requested from the school district, paper trays, so the food can stay separated, but instead, they sent paper plates, which means, all the liquids ran together, and there wasn’t as much room. We are back to Styrofoam now but are still in the process of removing it. Another big challenge we faced was getting people to listen, to let them know, and actually getting them to reduce their footprint.

As a School we are most excited about just reducing our waste, recycling paper & cardboard, glass, plastic, aluminum and educating people about saving our earth. We are excited to be working together as a team, and the projects we’re doing together like painting the boxes. We are mostly excited about receiving our $1000 grant on Thursday.

We had fun working together as a team, and discussing ideas and different ways to help.