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Success Story: Gregory Heights Elementary
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Gregory Heights Elementary
(click image to enlarge)
Student leadership team members at Gregory Heights Elementary |
School District: Highline
School Location: Burien
Began participating in the Green Schools Program: December 2008
Level one of the Green Schools Program: Achieved in June 2009
Waste Reduction and Recycling
- The school increased its recycling rate from 23 percent to 38 percent.
- Efforts included educating students about recycling, reducing lunchtime garbage volume and launching breakfast milk carton recycling.
- The Gregory Heights Student Leadership Team gave classroom presentations on recycling, launched classroom waste audits, made posters and purchased a worm bin to begin composting food scraps
- Recycling containers provided by the Green Schools Program were added to the lunchroom for milk cartons, juice boxes, plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
- School staff placed recycling stickers on classroom and lunchroom recycling containers. Provided by the Green Schools Program, the stickers list what can and can’t be recycled.
- The school promoted and initiated a “waste free lunch” day in which students and staff were encouraged to reduce their lunchtime garbage. Students and staff noticed that garbage bins were much less full on the “waste free lunch” day.
- Students participated in a “zero waste” cubby clean out at the end of the year. Unwanted materials that would have been disposed in past years were reused or recycled.
- The school instituted “reuse it” boxes for paper. Eighty percent of the school’s teachers use these boxes in their classrooms.
Award
- 2008 King County Earth Hero at School award: The school received this award for the collaborative effort among students, parents, the PTSA, teachers, office, support staff and principal that resulted in a comprehensive recycling program with widespread participation. Students decorated bulletin boards with recycling information, the PTSA purchased recycling containers, student leaders and lunch assistants guided students on proper recycling, and a recycling ethic now pervades the entire school.
For more information about this school’s participation in the Green Schools Program, contact:
Joan Johnson, teacher
johnstj@HSD401.org
Frank Eshpeter, Highline Public Schools facilities services supervisor
eshpetf@HSD401.org
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