Girl Scout Juniors Show the Way in Recycling at School

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

A Journey to win a Girl Scout Juniors Bronze Award is the same, but harder and longer – a two-year trek.

Eight girls of Troop 1185 set out together this year to win the highest award Juniors can win, which involves planning and carrying out a Journey. That implies exploration and discovery, both of which are fundamental purposes of the challenge.

But to get there also involves critical thinking, decision-making, skill in planning and communication, teamwork, sacrifice of personal time, plain hard work, and practical, measurable, sustainable outcomes.

"It's an award that Juniors can get for community service," said Ana Michaelson, 10. "But it has to go on after we've finished it."

Identifying a need (and it shouldn't stink)

Once a team decides to take the Journey, they have to identify a need. Most, though not all, of the Troop 1185 girls who signed on attend Roosevelt Elementary School, and there were some obvious needs they saw every day:

The amount of waste generated in their lunchroom.

"We decided to do recycling bins in our lunchroom because so much was going in the trash and then to a landfill," said Gianna Houston, 10.

"We had a bunch of options, and we voted, and recycling got the most," said Alena Blachkowski, 10.

"Some of us wanted to do composting," said Emma Knowlton, 9, "but we voted that one out because we were afraid it might stink."

Making a road map to success

That decision would be the first entry in a Journey journal, the important guide and documentation of the project.

"It's like a book, and it tells about the things you have to do to complete your Journey," said Michela Miller, 10. "Reach out, speak out, try out – put it in action."

Next, "We had to send an e-mail to the leaders on why we wanted to do our Journey," and get it approved, said Beatrice Lazarski, 9.

And then, with approval from their own organization, they had to win over the school – the principal, staff, teachers and of course the students.

"It involved a lot of talking to our principal," said Madison Sveum, 10. "I think we stayed in from recess weeks at a time.

"Then we had to do an interactive presentation to every classroom in the school."

Principal Mark Supa, the girls said, was supportive but a tough taskmaster, insisting on a rigorous plan to get everyone informed, on board and ready to participate.

As implementation time approached and began, Madison said, "We made announcements over the intercom during lunch and classes every day."

Buy-in from some important facilitators

As for the nuts and bolts of the operation, "We have special bins," said Anjonae Rockette, 10. "The yellow one is for milk cartons. Two green bins are for plastic containers" – sporks, juice boxes and pouches, cups and bottles.

"Waste Management" – the company with the schools' hauling contract – "thought our project was so cool," Michela said, "they gave us the bins for free. So the whole project didn't cost us anything."

Roosevelt students bought in, too, and the girls didn't even have to act as recycling cops.

"Ms. Carla," the lunchroom monitor, bought in big and took care of that, the girls said. "We only had to be there on the first day to remind people," the girls said. "But Ms. Carla would stand by the bins and say, 'Who put this in the trash?' And kids would admit it."

That's a lot of milk cartons

So, what did the members of the GirlPower Group, as they call themselves, accomplish? And what does it mean to the rest of us?

"The milk carton bin fills every day," the girls said. And according to their calculations, which are printed on a three-fold flyer they created, that amounts to...

• 375 milk cartons per day
• 1,875 milk cartons per week
• 7,500 milk cartons per month
• 75,000 milk cartons per year

... saved from the trash and landfill.

Since the City of Wauwatosa makes money on recycled material and spends money on landfilled material, the girls just demonstrated that kids can help their taxpaying parents while doing a large service toward preserving resources. Not bad for 9- and 10-year-olds.

They'll have to keep this up, the monitoring, the participation, for another year – as a new crop of kids comes in and, "The J-K'ers have to know what to do."

Spreading the word to others

Can this be a model for others?

"I think it could work if we go to other schools," Emma mused, "but how do we get there?"

"I was thinking we could tell girls from other schools and get them to start doing it, too," said Alena. "We can spread it through other Girl Scouts."

In other words, Waste Management perhaps should start looking around for some more barrels, as fertile minds multiply 75,000 milk cartons a year by eight more public elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools, not to mention private parochial schools.

Last word: "We've all learned that even one school at a time," Michela said, "we can make a huge difference."