Brittany Bryan
According to data collected by a group of Pickerington High School Central students, janitors at their school remove 24 to 26 trash bags from the cafeteria daily, amounting to 274,000 gallons of waste annually.
That’s about 6,000 bathtubs of trash collected every year from just one high school cafeteria.
This team of student scientists is Pickerington Central’s first to participate in the Teen Eco Summit, a Columbus Zoo program that encourages students to initiate projects at their high schools for environmental stewardship and sustainability, according to Brittany Bryan, the team’s AP environmental science teacher.
Brittany Bryan
The beginnings
The Teen Eco Summit began in November when the team took their first trip to the zoo. There, the students brainstormed project ideas and connected with environmental science professionals and students participating from other schools. This is when they decided to focus their initiative on waste management.
“We noticed everyone and their mother was doing a pollinator garden and that has won a lot in the past but we kind of wanted to stray from that,” junior Olivia Wennerstrom says. “Once we did the research and found out truly how much waste our school has each day, we were like, ‘This is outrageous, this needs to be fixed.’”
After collecting data for a waste audit, the team presented their research to the Columbus Zoo which rewarded the team with a $2,400 grant to pay for their cafeteria’s compost bins and maintenance.
“I think it’s kind of cool that we get to leave our mark on the school,” sophomore Braeden Neff says. “We’re changing the school for the better.”
Serving up progress
A team of seven former and current AP environmental science students implemented a two-part food waste reduction project at Central by bringing compost bins into the cafeteria and implementing a share table.
“Basically, (it’s) a table where you can put packaged food that you’re not planning on eating, and anyone in the cafeteria who wants to can go up and grab something from the share table,” senior and team captain Kate Seaver says.
Any packaged food left on the table at the end of the day is donated to the local food pantry. Within roughly two weeks, the students donated roughly 100 pounds of food.
“It’s my senior year and in the past, I kind of have kept my head down and barged through school,” Seaver says. “It’s like, I want to make an impact on the school, and I want to make a difference.”
Brittany Bryan
For the first time this school year, Pickerington City Schools qualified for the National School Lunch Program where students receive free lunches due to community need, making the students’ project even more impactful.
“The government gives us food now, we qualify, which means that we may not always see it, but poverty is definitely an issue here in Pickerington,” Wennerstrom says. “I think that as we keep donating all this food to the food pantry – I think it could help with that.”
Neff says he hopes the share table and donation system can become fully integrated into the community and students’ everyday lives to help combat poverty.
“I’ve gone to the food pantry before and there have been days when there’s nothing on the shelves,” Neff says, “So I think it’s kind of neat that, during the school year at least, the food pantry will always have some sort of food coming in on a daily basis.”
Building for the future
Neff says the team plans to keep these initiatives in place next school year with the hope of eventually making the project more sustainable so it can continue for years to come.
“Hopefully, if we do this right, we can actually do something different next year and just keep making the school better and better,” Wennerstrom says. “Then I can be like, ‘Yeah, that’s Pick Central, that’s my school.’”
Although she’s graduating, Seaver says she hopes the team’s future efforts can positively impact her three younger siblings.
“I want them to feel the impact too,” Seaver says, “They’re going to go to this school, and I want to make sure they can see the difference and hopefully become a part of making the difference.”
Frances Denman is an editorial assistant at CityScene Media Group. Feedback is welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com
