MVHS Waste Audit

On June 11th, a group of about 17 MVHS students got together to conduct a waste audit, assisted by a Waste Reduction Specialist from the Clark County Department of Solid Waste. Out of the 85 pounds of lunch garbage from that day, we used 42 pounds, or about half. Dumping the garbage into a kiddie pool, we sorted out all of the waste into the following categories: compostable (all paper, newspapers, magazines, food waste, paper waste, whole food), milk cartons, plastics (bottles, jugs, tubs, etc.), and non-recyclable plastic (baggies, wrappers, straws, pens, sporks, containers, etc.). Each category had its own bag/container. Then, we weighed each categorized bag. The results are below: -Compostable material: 30 lbs -Recyclable plastics: 3 lbs -Milk cartons: 2.3 lbs -Non-recyclable plastics: 6 lbs Double the above amounts for the total of all the lunch waste, not just the half that we sorted. From this data, we were able to conclude that 70% to 80% of the lunch garbage from that day could have been composted or recycled, if we had the composting program in place. We are very excited to put into place a composting program at Mountain View, next school year on September 20th. This will be a step towards becoming a Washington State Certified Green School.