Organics Carts on Parade

Our neighborhood hosts a sweet Labor Day event. The annual Labor Day parade starts at the church on the hill and follows a rectangular path around six city blocks. Michael’s navy blue Mini Cooper (authentic and very tiny) leads off the parade, followed by the Southwest Marching Band and most of the children from the neighborhood on bikes, scooters or roller-blades decorated with balloons and streamers. We added a new element this year. Quick on the heels of the Southwest drum corps came a large banner that featured “Willy the Wizard Worm” poking his wizard hat out of an organics cart (courtesy of local artists) and fronted a small phalanx of green organics carts, also decorated with signs and balloons, pushed by good-humored neighbors. As the era of marching alongside my kids on their bikes has passed (now they’re playing in the band), I was happy to find an excuse to join the parade.

Way to Go, Southwest!

One of my favorite interactions with students at Southwest High School this week was the fellow who stood before the recycling, organics and trash bins in the lunchroom, carefully sorting his leftover food, milk carton, burger wrapper and Styrofoam tray, glancing up at me to make sure he was doing it correctly. “This is so stressful!” he sighed, with a big grin. I also liked the macho-looking guys who sauntered up to the bins without making eye contact, sorted their stuff and then gave me a thumb’s-up as they walked away.

Only twice did I hear evidence of the attitude that many feared would be prevalent in high school teens: “This’ll never work,” a boy muttered to his buddy as they left the lunchroom one day. “Never gonna work,” replied the other. Yesterday, a fellow volunteer and I watched as a girl made a show of painstakingly unpacking her bag lunch, exaggerating the effort and rolling her eyes. “That’s never going to work,” she mumbled. I realize her dark attitude has far more to do with how she’s dealing with life right now than with sorting garbage per se.

These nay-sayers are a tiny minority of the student body, as far as I can tell. Most of the kids are willing to sort and are responsive to where we tell them to throw stuff away (“Cans and bottles in blue - Recycling; Food, milk cartons, napkins in green - Organics; Plastic dishes and Styrofoam trays in red - Trash”). Lots of kids already have it down after the first four days of school. And there’s a critical mass of students, whose creativity has yet to be tapped (as volunteer monitors, poster-makers, filmmakers), who are fully on board with this change and why we’re making it.

The Big Sort

September 1st is a big day around my house. My youngest son embarks on a two-week school trip as a new 7th-grader, my middle son faces his very first day of high school and my oldest, a junior, enters the ranks of Upperclassmen. As for me, today marks the introduction of Organics Recycling to the boys’ high school, a new program that I am facilitating.

Two years ago, I worked to shift my kids’ small, private school toward a system of sorting compostable waste. It was a relative piece of cake. The big prize, locally, has always been Southwest High School, where around 1700 students (plus staff) generate 5 dumpsters-worth of garbage per day. Thanks to valiant efforts by other parents and local non-profits, the Minneapolis Public Schools has embraced the concept of organics recycling as a way to cut costs while doing the right thing environmentally. This month, 20 schools in the district will come on line with this more stringent recycling program.

But Southwest High is the only public high school in the city that’s taking it on, and I’m the point man. It’s hard to say we’re ready. The color-coded bins are at school but not yet set up; signs are not yet available, and the dozens of student volunteers we hope to enlist to work as “waste station monitors” during lunch have yet to materialize. It’s been summer, after all. Ready or not, 1700 kids will be eating lunch today and tossing their garbage and it’s my job (with help from others) to teach them a new way to do it.

My husband, a psychologist, reassures me by saying, “Just observe.” That’s a big piece of what we’ll be doing this week: observing and absorbing the scene, gauging the prevailing attitudes and behaviors as we invite these kids to take a positive step to reduce waste and related greenhouse gas emissions.

This feels like a big challenge, but one well worth taking. I’ll let you know how it goes.