On March 16 at the Maintenance and Operations headquarters for the TUHSD, Zoe Pearl, the Education and Tour Coordinator for the Marin Sanitary Service in San Rafael, presented to a board of lead custodians from the district and one of Redwood’s vice principals, Larry Pratt.
She suggested that the schools in the Tam District comply with Assembly Bill 1826 by subscribing to the Marin Sanitary Service (MSS) composting services, which are included in the district’s garbage service. Redwood already subscribes to their recycling services.
In Oct. 2014 Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB-1826, which took effect April 1, and requires businesses that produce at least eight cubic meters of organic waste to arrange for composting services.
Organic waste means food waste, green waste, landscape and pruning waste, non-hazardous wood waste and food-soiled paper waste that is mixed in with food waste. If businesses such as Redwood do not meet the requirements, they will be fined.
Pearl said that ideally, high school students should be able to compost and recycle on campus. However, due to potential contamination and “laziness” of students it is nearly impossible, according to Drake’s lead custodian Robert Amaral.
Other campuses across the TUHSD have made numerous efforts to have on-campus recycling and composting available to students, much like the efforts of Redwood students. The Environmental Action Club and the Companamaneros Club have attempted to start programs at Redwood this year.
At Tam, there have been multiple failed attempts to starting a recycling and composting program, according to lead custodian Patrick Gannon.
“Over the years [running the recycling/composting programs] was just passed around like a hot potato or it was just everybody just does it themselves. It would start out enthusiastic in the beginning and then fail,” Gannon said.
There are barriers hindering composting and recycling from being accessible to high school students within the district, according to the district custodians and Pearl. Mullery, Amaral and Gannon attribute one of the major barriers to the lack of follow through from students.
“It is not happening on the scale it needs to or in any organized kind of way,” Gannon said.
The recycling program within the classrooms at Redwood was initially student run, but has not been successful due to the lack of student initiative, according to Tim Mullery, Redwood’s lead custodian.
In each classroom there are three bins to sort paper, plastic, and cans and bottles, but the misuse of the bins make the recycling program unsuccessful, according to Mullery. There is very similar predicament at other high schools in Marin, according to Pearl.
Gannon said that some of the classrooms at Tam have a recycling system that is run well by the teachers and has active participation from students, but others make the recycling bins provided in the classrooms an extension of the trash bins.
“The custodians get very fed up with [the misused recycling bins] and they end up throwing [the contents of the recycling bins] out because it has other things than recyclables,” Gannon said.
Currently, there is no solution for the recycling and composting issue at Redwood or within the TUHSD besides the occasional club startup, such at the Environmental Action Club’s petition. However, every custodian from the district would eventually like to have a successful waste diversion program on campus for students to use.
“We are all in agreement of wanting this [recycling and composting] to work,” Mullery said.
Director of Maintenance & Operations of TUHSD David O’Connor echoed a similar sentiment.
“It’s evident this needs to be a bigger thing, it’s the students, teachers and custodians,” O’Connor said.
