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NORWALK, Conn. Saving the Norwalk school system money is a mission for Tracey Sutton's third-graders at Brookside Elementary School. They travel the halls every afternoon, picking up discarded items that can be sold by the city of Norwalk.
The kids are recycling with a passion not only do they cut down on the waste stream but they also collect returnable bottles and cans to earn money to fund field trips.
It's an example that should be duplicated in all Norwalk schools, according to Diane Lauricella, an activist who says recycling at the schools would save Norwalk "taxpayers thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars."
Recycling at the schools is a "huge opportunity," said Hal Alvord, director of the Department of Public Works. It would cut the amount of waste the city pays to dispose of and generate income, because the city sells the cardboard and other materials at a profit. Brookside and Rowayton Elementary schools have good recycling programs, but other schools do not, even though school recycling is mandated by state law.
"Some have recycling, because a principal or a parent thought it was important. But it's not consistent. There's no reason for it," said Lauricella, a board member of Keep Norwalk Beautiful. "It's not a complicated situation, and I have been told that almost every school has some semblance of a program or at least the containers. But it's what you do with the containers that count."
Lauricella has been trying for years to improve recycling at Norwalk schools. She got the matter onto the agenda at a February meeting of the Common Council's Public Works Committee, only to have to start over when the committee chairmanships changed in a political shift.
She expected to speak on the matter at Wednesday's meeting of the Board of Education's Finance Committee, but that meeting has been canceled. "I was told that the Board of Ed would discuss [recycling] in May," she said.
Councilman David McCarthy, R-District E, the new chairman of the DPW committee, is on board. "This one for me is easy," McCarthy said. "I'm hoping that over the summer we can make it part of the policy for all of the schools to have a recycling program."
McCarthy said he spoke to Alvord, who said recycling at the schools is a "mixed bag."
Alvord said in February that his department can't get a program started without direction from school administrators and principals.
"I feel it is the public works department responsibility to create a good program," Lauricella said. "Then it's the principal's responsibility to make sure that the right people in every school implement and follow the program that DPW puts together."
The recycling program at Brookside was easy to implement, Sutton said. "It really doesn't take time at all once you teach them what to do, and they really love doing it," she said. Her class is "pretty much the recycling hub in the school," as the kids go around every afternoon collecting mixed paper for recycling. The five-cent deposit on the cans and bottles they collect paid for their trip to the Maritime Aquarium this week.
The kids also compost waste, which they use for the school's edible garden and the flower garden. Children in the Achieve after-school program also pitch in.
Sutton's one regret is that the cafeteria recycling program is not as good as it could be, because of the need to remove food waste from containers. Lauricella said another method of reducing the costs is to buy fewer things that require packaging.
Jack Chiaramonte, chairman of the Board of Education, said the board is looking for "out of the box" suggestions on cost savings. Lauricella hopes the schools try recycling. "I guess a lot of people feel that because it's not a million dollars it's not worth it," she said.
McCarthy promises to stick with it. "It makes economic sense because it all goes to the bottom line," he said.
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