Greenification of Decoration
As a previous public educator, I know the challenges that teachers have faced both before and post-COVID, and now more than ever teachers need our support. The educational crisis in America has never been more apparent. Teachers leave in droves from their long-time professions moving into sectors just to escape the abuses of the public education world. However, this call for support may fall on deaf ears as school districts themselves face budget shortages, and fewer and fewer can meet the demands of their teachers and staff. What can be done in these situations?
In times of crisis, it’s important to remember to make lemonade from lemons and make a good situation out of what you have, and for most campuses their biggest situation is trash. A messy campus is conducive to both poor student performance and poor student engagement with their school overall. If we look closer at the trash, the majority are plastic wrapping, bottles, and cans. While the trash can be disposed of, the cans and bottles can be recycled. Schools can create programs such as classroom recycling bins where students drop off their empty bottles and cans much like the stations at the TSA checkpoints in the airports. These collection bins can be sold once filled and at a price of about $1.05/Lb, an average classroom can produce 5 lbs of plastic recyclable waste per week (30-student classroom). in a 50-classroom school, this can amount to approximately $260 for the entire school per week; with this rate, we can estimate that the school could generate over $1500 in 6 months only from classroom recycling programs. This doesn’t take into account recycling that can be done on the campus, outside the school, during sports events, or other school events. Pooled together and split, this rate of recycling can generate $30 of decoration budget for each teacher simply for taking an extra step in their classroom management.
Looking at this from the perspective of classroom management, teachers can use these recycling contests to engage students to be active participants in their school’s image. Teachers can create clubs that not only encourage the recycling of materials to fund school endeavors, but also teach students the importance of volunteering, giving back, and ecological preservation. Not only will schools benefit from added revenue for teachers, but these newfound profits can help fund student activities and trips; this can really incentivize students to participate and encourage their peers to do the same. The greenification of the classroom can lead to other financial dividends that all can prosper from. This idea is only a starting point in the multitude of solutions that can be offered by MendEd Solutions.
