2000 Trash Cutter Awards Program Case Studies

City of San Diego: Best Schools Program

• Program Description
• Program Summary
• Costs
• Contact

Program Description

The city of San Diego has a comprehensive environmental education component for all grade levels of San Diego city schools. The three components include: providing technical assistance to schools requesting help in designing and implementing school wide recycling programs, making classroom educational presentations several hundred times each year, and, as a celebration of Earth Month, hosting the students' environmental fair.

Program Summary

Schools can call the Environmental Services Department (ESD) for assistance in setting up recycling programs. ESD has provided assistance in the areas of paper, beverage containers, and yard waste recycling. District wide yard waste and paper recycling programs, serviced by a private contractor, have helped schools achieve a high waste diversion rate. Other diversion activities include beverage container recycling programs operated by individual school ecology clubs as a source for fundraising, and vermicomposting operations included as part of the fourth and fifth grade curriculum. All of these activities are hands-on, routine activities for students at many schools. The city makes $100.00 "mini grants" available to schools that need a small amount of capital to get started with recycling and campus beautification efforts. According to school district custodial operations, the school district has achieved a 50 percent waste diversion level.

The city provides over 330 presentations about recycling and waste reduction each year to local schools via an educational subcontractor, I Love A Clean San Diego (ILACSD). ILACSD contacts schools directly to determine interest level. Several ILACSD staff are trained to give classroom presentations on waste reduction practices and the importance of recycling in home and in school. Topics covered include the difference between a dump and a landfill, the three R's, closing the loop, curbside recycling, and different hands-on activities geared toward the appropriate grade levels (Grades K-6 making toys from trash; Grades 7-9 manually selecting trash from recyclables; and Grades 10-12 identifying products made from recycled materials). 

Earth Month in San Diego is celebrated through a special educational students' environmental fair held once a year at ESD's EnergyStar Green Building. This event began in 1998 as a small one-day comprehensive environmental educational program with 60 students attending. Due to its success, the program rapidly expanded. In 1999, 170 students from four different elementary schools came to the Green Building over a  two day period.

The barrier to success for this program is coordinating schools on a fair and geographically diverse basis. In order to select invitees, the list of schools was narrowed based on the time of day the school started and the date of its last ILACSD classroom presentation. Once the list had been reduced to 40 from 300, four schools were selected based on location, and number of students that could be accommodated.

The three goals of the event are designed to supplement the teachers' curriculum and include: teach the students about recycling and waste reduction, to have them participate in activities that raise their awareness of the impacts that routine actions have on natural habitats and resources, and to expose them to professions in the environmental field.

Educational partners included ESD staff, the County Office of Outdoor Education and I Love A Clean San Diego. A total of 20 educators participated in the fair and provided information on integrated waste management activities.

Costs

Funding for the fair comes from the recycling program budget, maintained by AB 939 fees earned on all waste generated in the city.

For Further Information, Contact:

City of San Diego
9601 Ridgehaven Ct. Ste 320
San Diego, CA  92123-1636
(858) 573-1284
(858) 492-5089 (fax)