By serving as a clearinghouse of best practices driven by interested school administrators and community volunteers, we hope to replace polystyrene trays with compostable trays and then, where possible, divert the trays and food waste from the landfill to a compost facility.
Our existence and viability began with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District in 2012. School administrators agreed to a pilot effort of replacing polystyrene trays used in the school cafeteria with a more suitable compostable alternative. The pilot grew from eliminating polystyrene trays into a project that resulted in meaningful connections and results around waste reduction issues. The children, teachers, principal, custodians, cafeteria staff, and the greater community at large dedicated time and resources to this effort. Using savings identified from the initial waste audit, and by hiring a sustainability coordinator, the school district was able to purchase compostable trays and launch a system-wide waste diversion program beginning in August 2013. Buoyed by this success, Every Tray Counts moved to the Durham Public School District and worked with an elementary school, EK Powe, to implement a similar program. The pilot is still underway.
Ultimately, our goal is to replace polystyrene trays in all schools across North Carolina, ingrain the “use-recycle-re-use” concepts into the school lunchroom and educational curriculum, and engage private businesses and governmental agencies to commit to diverting waste from landfills.
We are writing to ask you to share any tips or success stories that we may feature on our website.
If your school is not currently engaged in such a program, please see the NC Schools in Action page on the website for ideas.
We believe this is a great opportunity for your school to create positive momentum in your community and to teach other schools across North Carolina how to make a change that can be simple and yet create such positive results around waste reduction. Imagine the possibilities when children learn about sustainability and then become sustainable leaders.
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Please contact us to indicate an interest at everytraycounts@gmail.com. We will follow up with you as soon as we can.