Following the Lead of these Follow Your Waste Winners
by Sanitation Foundation Team
In January 2022, we launched a new educational tool that we’re extremely proud of: our digital, interactive Follow Your Waste game, designed to teach kids ages 8 and up about full lifecycle of each of New York City’s five boroughs’ waste streams, proper waste sorting (a.k.a. The importance of recycling!), and the amazing infrastructure behind where our waste goes thanks to the work of NYC Sanitation!
The game is designed to engage NYC’s youngest residents and bring them into the conversation about waste management, building awareness–and consequently solutions–for a healthier, cleaner, more sustainable NYC.
To celebrate the launch and kick-off Follow Your Waste’s community engagement capacities, we teamed up with NYC Sanitation’s Bureau of Recycling & Sustainability and their Zero Waste Schools team to offer the Follow Your Waste Prize – a $1000 cash prize for classrooms that engaged with the Follow Your Waste game and created a waste diversion project in their school or community.
Students and their teachers were tasked with the following: Build a project that addresses waste management and recycling issues, and which benefits the larger school and neighborhood or community.
We are wowed by the results! Innovative, solutions-oriented, creative solutions that see the big picture behind the small steps of proper waste sorting.
Students engaged in waste-diversion projects such as community fridge food waste reduction via community fridges and waste sorting education stations.
Huge thanks to everyone who participated, and congratulations to our winners:
721k
Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School
Columbia Secondary School
Growing Up Green Charter School
Learning Through Play Pre-k
New Exploration into Science, Technology and Math (NEST+m)
P.S. 65 Mother Hale Academy
P.S. 889
P177Q
PS 140 Nathan Straus
PS 165 Q Edith K Bergtraum
PS 176
PS 177 The Marlboro School
PS 68 The Cambridge Family School
PS 90
PS/MS 57 James Weldon Johnson
Queens School of Inquiry
Stuyvesant High School
Fort Greene Preparatory Academy
The $1,000 is intended to be put toward existing or new waste diversion projects, class activities or field-trips, as well as other related expenses. We look forward to seeing what these schools do with the winnings!