SNOHOMISH — A boy in a striped shirt speckled with the evidence of lunch held his empty milk carton over a recycling bin almost as tall as him and looked questioningly at Carrie Stamatiou.
“Yep, that goes there,” she told him during a noisy September morning in the cafeteria at Dutch Hill Elementary School.
As the boy tossed his carton, a smiling girl with a blonde ponytail confidently emptied her juice box into a bin labeled “Liquids” and disposed of the box in the recycling.
“That goes there,” she said, then glanced at Stamatiou for a nod of approval.
Dutch Hill Elementary’s recycling and compost program is heading into its third year. It started in spring 2013 when parents suggested the idea. Since then, school staff and parent volunteers have worked together during lunch to teach students how to separate recycling, compost and trash. It reduces waste from the school and helps build good habits in children at a young age, said Liz Dickson. She and Stamatiou are two of the regular parent volunteers. Both have children at the school.
“I think it’s amazing because I’m a big recycler at home and I think it’s important for our world,” Dickson said. “This shows the kids, my kids at least, that recycling is not just at home.”
It takes a few days for students to learn the basics about what goes in the recycling, liquids, compost and garbage bins. After that, it starts to become habit. They look for recycling symbols on their plastic and cardboard. They empty leftover food into the compost bin and squeeze the last of their drinks into the liquids container. Instead of four bags of garbage being hauled out to the dumpsters per lunch period, it’s down to about one garbage bag along with one each of liquids, compost and recycling, Stamatiou said.
“I think that this is a great way for them to learn how to be responsible stewards for the environment,” she said. “They get to not only limit the amount of trash at their school, but they get to learn what kinds of things are recyclable and what’s not very quickly.”
A program through New Jersey recycling company TerraCycle also allows the school to collect bags of used Capri Sun pouches and turn them in for cash. They netted about $100 last year.
Some students are in a hurry to get to recess and try to bypass the recycling or compost by stuffing all of their waste into a plastic bag and dropping it in the trash bin.
“There’s a little bit of dumpster-diving involved,” Stamatiou said, reaching one gloved hand in to fish a juice box out of the compost bin. “But they do really well. The little kids actually do better than the older kids.”
The little kids listen better, Principal Jack Tobin said. There are nearly 550 students at Dutch Hill Elementary. Grades kindergarten through third have first lunch, followed by grades fourth through sixth.
The nice thing about the recycling program is every child participates and the school benefits from their help, Tobin said.
“We want to reduce garbage costs. It’s obviously environmentally responsible,” he said. “It’s actually a cost neutral thing and it’s the right thing to do. We could get a bigger dumpster and throw more things away or we can focus more on compost and recycling.”
Kaylie Baxter, 10, is in fourth grade and has learned a lot about how to sort her garbage and how important it is. There’s too much garbage in the world and not enough space to dump it, she said.
“If you don’t recycle, it gets worse and worse,” she said.
Griffin Eulenberg, 11, finds it pretty easy to remember what kinds of garbage go in which containers at the end of lunch. The sixth-grader worries that recycling isn’t solving all of the waste problems, though. He’s noticed how much food kids throw away that could have been eaten.
“That’s not good,” he said.
Recycling is still a good start, he said. It helps the trees, air and water by making less garbage and keeping factories from producing new thing that could have been reused or made from recycled stuff. More people should recycle and compost to keep the earth healthy, he said.
“Not recycling is almost bad for you,” Griffin said.
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.
Help out
The school always can use more volunteers during the lunch hour, parent volunteer Liz Dickson said. They can be parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings or anyone else interested in helping students, she said. To learn more, call the Dutch Hill Elementary School office at 360-563-4450.
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