On Sunday, 4/24, our youth group joined with Andy Mavian, Theresa Kennedy and Jean Winget from the GreenFaith team to conduct a re-audit of our trash and our paper recycling.

We added trash from additional locations and made a few comparisons with our October trash adventure. This time trash was gathered from six locations.

Just a few of our observations:

We learned that our preschool had significantly improved their recycling of paper! Congrats to them!
This time we found very few bottles or cans in any of our trash. That’s another improvement!
Once again, we found a large amount of plastic in the form of spoons and forks and #6 plastic cups and plastic wraps and bags. Another large percentage of our waste consists of paper cups and plates.
This time we were concerned to find a large amount of styrofoam cups in some of the trash.
When we audited the blue paper recycling bins from fellowship hall, we were so happy to find that many, many people had filled them with appropriate mixed paper for recycling. Unfortunately, a few folks had used these paper recycling bins as trash cans, and had contaminated most of the contents with coffee and food. So, unfortunately, that means that all that recycled paper became trash.
Additional learnings and recommendations are yet to come. We are so appreciative that our youth are working with the green team waste auditors and will be helping us to analyze our results and to develop recommendations for improvements! ~Jean Post-Winget