Enviro-friendly schools ‘Live Green’
Contact: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Friday, April 30, 2010
Environmentally conscious students and educators from across Fayette County schools recently gathered to celebrate their participation in the Live Green Lexington Partners program.
This program started four years ago as Lexington WasteBuster Schools, with a focus on the importance of waste reduction and recycling. From day care to high school, students have learned about recycling, preventing litter and being good stewards of the environment.
This year, the program expanded to include storm-water education and a greater emphasis on composting. There are now WasteBuster Schools and Water Partner Schools, with many involved in both programs.
In the four years of the WasteBuster program, more than 7,500 waste-reduction activities have been conducted in Lexington’s schools. Using 20 as the average size classroom, that comes to 150,000 student contacts.
Explanation of the participation levels:
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A WasteBuster preschool or day care must have a recycling program and participate in classroom activities.
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A WasteBuster school must form a recycling team, have schoolwide recycling and have custodians and cafeteria workers participate.
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A Champion WasteBuster must complete the activities required by a WasteBuster school and also conduct a Dumpster dive and participate in activities at the classroom or grade level.
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An Elite WasteBuster must complete the activities required by the champion level, participate in schoolwide classroom activities (on average two per core classroom) and also have PTA and booster organizations participate in recycling.
The new Water Partners program has no levels of participation. Instead, a school is a Water Partner if classrooms participate in activities about storm water and water quality and students conduct their own storm-water projects.
Storm-water activities include stenciling storm drains, creating storm-water maps of school grounds, planting rain gardens, making or installing rain barrels, performing water-quality testing and completing the Kentucky Green and Healthy Schools water inventory.
In the program’s first year, there were 702 storm-water activities performed in classrooms. Assuming an average class size of 20, that comes to more than 14,000 student contacts.
For more information about these environmental programs, contact Maxine Rudder with Bluegrass PRIDE.
Photo caption: At the April 28 recognition program in Norsworthy Auditorium, students shared what they learned this year in the WasteBuster and Water Partner programs.