A huge portion of a school’s waste is food and food packaging. You can make a big impact here with careful considerations. 

Encourage reusable water bottle use (especially important this year as water fountains may be disabled as a pandemic safety strategy).

Replace food items (like candies and crackers) used in learning activities with items that can be sterilized and reused like pennies, paper clips or dry beans. (Beans may have to be composted after extensive use as they cannot be washed.)

Build a very simple worm bin for go-to classroom composting. My former high school students loved to visit the worms and feed them their fruit scraps. Cover waste with paper periodically to reduce the chance of smell (which I never had a problem with).

Give “Waste-Free Wednesdays” a try. Encourage students (with good communication home) to pack snacks on Wednesdays that do not produce waste. Maybe collect the trash from snack-time for a few days to show why going waste free is even necessary. Collect small tubs this summer like plastic dairy dishes (cream cheese, sour cream) and give them to students at the start of the year as a reusable container if your families don’t have the budget for buying storage containers. Encourage whole fruit as a snack and dispose of cores and peels in your worm-bin.