How much waste is produced in our building each day? More than one pound for every middle and high school student according to a recent waste audit. The hope is that awareness will be raised through this experience and the result will be a reduction of waste in the future.
It’s not every day kids volunteer to sort trash at school, but that’s what Woodstock Union High School (WUHS) students did on Jan, 26th to help Conservation Leadership Institute (CLI) members find out how much trash the school produces in one day.
In an effort to find out what exactly comprises the trash and how much of it the school produces, about 30 WUHS students worked with some adults from the community to sort trash into separate categories. The categories included: milk and OJ containers, liquid waste, non- recyclable trash, and a “still alive” pile for items that could still be used.
“We’re hoping to change behavior,” says Junior Elena Santos who is one of the CLI students working on the project. She noted that they hope to have more organized trash and recycling systems in the future to reduce waste. “For example, someone threw a full bottle of water without the lid into a paper recycle bin soaking the paper and preventing it from being recycled.”

While the audit was useful, not all of the volunteers enjoyed sorting trash, “I disliked the experience a lot, I thought the grossest part was the liquid waste,” says senior Mallory Nestor.
The WUHS custodians first gathered all the trash in the school the previous night and then student volunteers brought it into an enclosed space to be sorted. CLI group leader Kat Robbins said the ultimate goal of the event was to, “Reduce the amount of waste we send to the land fill.” By sorting the trash into specific categories and weighing it, CLS members will target those specific areas in the future for waste reduction.
A “still alive” pile was created to save items that could still be used, even though they had been thrown out. It included a wide assortment of things including: four plastic lunch plates from the cafeteria, a glue stick, and four bags of unopened chips that were later re-thrown out.  
The grand total amount of trash sorted and weighed by the volunteers was about 550 pounds.  That’s more than one pound of garbage for each of the 528 students in the middle and high school combined.
“Awareness is the first step to making the school more sustainable,” said Robbins. The CLI members and Robbins will have a presentation on Best Thursday about the results of the waste audit, as it was called, and what they plan to do to make the school more sustainable.