Waste Free - Save Room for Tomorrow

Driving toward a Waste Free future.

Waste Free OC honored two teams of Eastshore Elementary school students with a Recycling Champion award at the campaign launch event last week. The two teams are: Stem the Stream and Revenge of the Plastics.

The Stem the Stream team focused on reducing school lunch waste. They implemented a reverse lunch system in which the students take recess before eating. With this new arrangement, students get play out of the way first, and then eat their lunches.  With recess already over, students are willing to take the time to throw their garbage away properly. These students have also dedicated their time to collecting food waste related items including snack packages, such as drink pouches, chip bags, and cookie wrappers, and refund through TerraCycle, a small business that recycles and converts these items into school supplies, toys, bags, and more.

“By reducing what we throw away, we were able to have our garbage collection reduced from daily to every other day. This saves our school a lot of money,” stated the Stem the Stream team.

Not only are the students implementing student education programs, they are also educating parents. The parents learn about eliminating waste and making green and economical lunches. The students plan to meet with the Irvine Unified School District’s food service department to research and generate new ways to reduce the use of packaging in foods. Their final plan  is to develop a website that enlightens other schools about the “Stem the Stream” project, sharing their ideas and methods.

Stem the Stream team members include:

• Kate Jensen
• Matt Akins
• James Young
• Evan Chang
• Stav Yativ
• Will Tomlinson

Another team from Eastshore, Revenge of the Plastics, also participated in the Recycling Champions environmental education program. They are part of the Quickscience team, sponsored by Quicksilver.

Revenge of the Plastics team members worked on a project related to the Pacific Garbage Patch–a vortex of plastic in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas. This oceanic waste is caused by plastics, chemical debris, and other garbage that is pulled into the ocean by the currents. With all this waste beneath the ocean, wildlife is put in danger. Birds, turtles, jellyfish, and fish feed in and often get caught in the oceanic debris, not only endangering wildlife, but because of our consumption of fish, putting humans in danger as well.

The students are “are teaching others to avoid the use of single-use disposable plastic – including plastic bags and water bottles.”

Orange County's young leaders.

The ultimate goal of Revenge of the Plastics is to inform and educate residents in Orange County on avoiding the use of disposable plastics by replacing them with earth-friendly substitutes. They want people to use refillable water bottles instead of disposable bottles, bring their own utensils for lunch rather than using plastic forks and spoons, and use reusable containers rather than using plastic sandwich bags.

Revenge of the Plastics team members include:

• Lauren Kim
• Ai Kaisho
• Luke Son
• Joseph Kim
• Erik Heins
• Amit Yativ

Congratulations to both teams for their efforts to reduce waste.  Waste Free OC is proud to honor each team!

All photos in this post taken at Orange County's Frank R. Bowerman Landfill on February 10, 2010.