City Schools to Get Single-Stream Recycling

Boston Public Schools are switching to single-stream recycling this year to decrease their overall waste.

With single-stream recycling, students, teachers and other school staff wouldn’t have to sort paper from cardboard from plastic. Instead, they would be able to put all recyclable materials in one container.

Phoebe Beierle, who the city hired this summer to install recycling and environmental programs at schools, said most city schools would have the new recycling system by November.

The city started distributing 64-gallon "Big Blue" recycling carts at houses and small apartment buildings July 2009.

“They’re doing it in their homes,” Beierle said of the public school students. “They should be doing it in the schools.”

How single-stream recycling will work at the schools

Capitol Waste Services will pick up and dispose of the materials for free at all the public schools except those in Dorchester, a neighborhood the company doesn't service.

In the meantime, the district is looking for sources of funding for the carts, which would cost a total of $30,000 to $60,000.  

Beierle said she’s also looking for ways to pay for a campaign to educate the schools about the new program. She said students could design posters promoting it, and the city could hold a recycling competition. At the same time, the schools will recruit teachers and custodians to help carry out the program and encourage everyone in the building to recycle.   

“With leadership support within the schools, she said, “We’re hoping it can be a really successful roll out.”

The history of recycling at the Boston Public Schools 

Boston City Councilor At-Large John Connolly said at the that requiring the Boston Public Schools to recycle was an important part of getting the city as a whole to live sustainably.

While the new program won't make recycling mandatory during the two-year implementation phase, Beierle said the city will likely adopt a policy later on.

All Boston Public Schools began recycling Styrofoam trays in their cafeterias in 1997.

“But as far as the recycling of paper and plastic goes,” Connolly said, “that is a decision that’s made on a school-by-school basis.”

Still, the district recycles about 400,000 tons of paper, cardboard and Styrofoam every year, Beierle wrote in an e-mail. 

In 2006, Abitibi-Consolidated, a company that converts paper into newsprint, installed dumpster-sized recycling containers at the schools. The green and yellow bins and the collection services were free, and the company paid the schools a nominal amount of money for each ton of paper they collected.

In 2007, the public schools recycled a total of 393,925 pounds of paper in just over three months, after Mayor Thomas M. Menino challenged them to a competition. The previous year, before they had the large recycling containers, the schools had only recycled 2150 pounds.

But during the 2007-2008 school year, the company gradually pulled out from all but seven of the schools because recycling paper had become less lucrative, Beierle said.

Paper piled up in the Dumpsters, which were soon covered in graffiti and even set on fire. All in all, she said, the program took on a bad reputation.

Now, students with disabilities who participate in the STRIVE Citicycle Program collect paper from the schools and sort it at the recycling center in Brighton that the district owns.

Teachers and principals have had to schedule collections, which Councilor Connolly said was a burden. But the new contract with Capitol Waste Services would relieve them of the responsibility.

“This would be a huge step forward for making it easier to recycle at schools and not put the pressure on principals and teachers to figure out how to fund it and get the service in place,” he said.