Green Up Our Schools

Description

Green Up Our Schools is a national environmental 501(c)(3) public charity whose member elementary schools improve their recycling by 52% and divert ~240,000lbs of recyclable material from the landfill each year.

The primary goal of Green Up Our Schools is to reduce the amount of waste that is disposed of in landfills. Recycling rates in the United States peaked in 1996 and have not improved since. To address this issue, Green Up Our Schools is working to change the norms within elementary school systems, such that students are introduced to the benefits of recycling at a young age and those habits become second nature.

To facilitate this change, Green Up Our Schools provides funding to elementary schools over the course of three years to implement recycling and waste reduction programs ($2,000 per school), consulting services, and monthly check-ins. By working with a limited number of elementary schools within a given district, Green Up Our Schools demonstrates that the recycling and waste reduction programs are administratively feasible and that there is demand for these services within the community. Thus, our secondary goal is to create district-wide policy change by working with district administrators to make these services available to all schools.