The City of Austin has honored Brykerwoods Elementary School with the 2010 Environmental Awareness Award for its work in protecting and enhancing the environment. The school joins such notables as the Zero Waste Alliance and the Austin Energy Green Building Program in receiving the award.
“We've been told that our application stood out among the nine submissions in our category for our outreach in our community,” Amy Chamberlain, former Go Green Chair of the Bryker Woods Elementary PTA, tells Parent:Wise.
The award isn’t a surprise for Parent:Wise readers: our April 2009 cover story spotlighted Brykerwoods Elementary for the school’s above-and-beyond environmental work with students.
The school not only composts its cafeteria scraps, it consults with other schools to encourage them to do the same. It also hosts an annual clothing swap and provides free, cold, filtered water for re-usable bottles at its Fall Carnival (this, to decrease the waste associated with bottled water). And this year during the week of Earth Day, the school allowed the community to participate in its Electronic Waste Recycling Drive to raise awareness about the appropriate disposal of electronics.
Now, Brykerwoods is considering whether to use a local commercial composter to pick-up all of its food and paper waste. This, because a commercial compopster would be able to compost anything but plastic, metal and Styrofoam —something that would dramatically decrease the school’s output to landfills, says Ms. Chamberlain. The school would maintain its own compost piles for demonstration purposes.
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