Free recycling bins available to HISD schools and facilities
UPDATE 04/24/13: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that all HISD work locations are eligible to obtain the free recycling bins.
Just over a year ago, HISD’s Sustainability and Energy team launched the Green School Challenge. This program is a friendly school competition designed to promote long-term behavioral changes, create awareness, reduce energy consumption and water usage, and increase single-stream recycling.
The Green School Challenge encourages every school to build its own “Green Team” comprised of students, staff, and administrators and to develop a program that is specific to the characteristics of each school. Since the program began, HISD has recycled more than 2,200 tons of waste.
HISD’s Sustainability and Energy team wants your school (or facility) to get involved. Through a grant provided by the Houston-Galveston Area Council and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, your campus or work location can order recycling bins at no cost to your school or department. To learn more about how this works, please email Kim Urban at KURBAN@houstonisd.org.
Why recycle?
Recycling conserves natural resources, saves energy in the manufacturing of new products and reduces or eliminates pollution associated with the extraction and processing of raw materials. Recycling reduces the need for landfills. Recycling decreases greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global climate change. Further, recyclables have value as raw material.
Throughout the last two school years, the district rolled out a variety of energy saving initiatives. Since the start of 2011, HISD has saved over $2 million in energy costs by installing more energy efficient equipment, switching to four-day work weeks during the summer and implementing holiday energy saving initiatives.
In addition, HISD is committed to saving energy and resources through curriculum links, building new facilities to LEED Silver (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards and by investing in energy efficient retrofit products that save both money and energy. To date, more than a dozen of HISD’s new schools have achieved LEED certification with more to come as there are several additional applications being reviewed for certification at this time.
