District’s Recycling Efforts Net Savings While Helping the Environment

During the first half of the 2009/10 school year, an estimated 1,013 tons of recyclable paper, cardboard, and limited amounts of commingled metal, plastic food and beverage containers were collected from 240 Broward schools and other District facilities.

Broward County’s re-bidding of recycling collection services saved the District nearly $546,000 in disposal fees. That, combined with revenue of nearly $33,300 from the District’s recycling efforts, totaled nearly $579,000.

The District’s recycling program targets recyclable paper and cardboard generated in classrooms, administrative offices, libraries, receiving operations, along with smaller volumes of commingled food and beverage containers. Classrooms, administrative offices and many common areas are provided recycling bins, labels and other materials to encourage recycling.

School service staff members, along with student environmental clubs, are responsible for emptying recyclables from classrooms and other generation areas and transporting them to centralized collection areas. Some school facilities also utilize rollout collection carts. Recyclables are collected at each facility a least once a week, with some requiring multiple collections each week.