Ursinus Students Team Up with Perkiomen Valley Middle School East’s Green Team to Conduct Waste Audit

Thanks to a continued partnership with the Perkiomen Valley School District, Ursinus College students were given the opportunity to gain valuable real-world experience while giving back to the community.

Students in Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Brie Berry’s capstone class “Waste in America” made the trip to Perkiomen Valley Middle School East to team up with PV students to conduct a waste audit. The students looked through the trash being produced from the school’s cafeteria to see where food was being wasted. The group primarily measured the amount of meat, fruit, grain, vegetable, and liquid waste. The end goal is to see what systems can be put in place in order to limit food waste.

“If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” Berry said.

Berry’s students teamed up with the middle school’s Green Team, led by Kate Czapla, who teaches life science at the school. The Green Team is an extracurricular club whose mission is to help make the school more environmentally friendly through conservation and sustainability.

“Some of the eighth graders have been with me since sixth grade and their passion for this sort of work has been there and grown over time,” Czapla said.

The idea to conduct the waste audit together was born when Czapla and her students attended the Zero Waste Summit at Ursinus last year. It was there that a lot of Czapla’s students learned about food waste and where she met Berry.

“I’ve been wanting to do a waste audit for a long time, but it’s a huge undertaking and wasn’t feasible for me to do by myself,” Czapala said. “My kids are now getting the chance to work with college students who they view as super cool and awesome so it’s inspiring for them.”

One of the main topics in Berry’s class is food waste and she always had a desire for her students to get hands-on with the waste they talk about. The opportunity to partner with Czapla and her students not only gave them legit hands-on experience with waste, but also the chance to gain valuable real-world skills in project design and implementation, data analysis, and project management.

“This is something that a lot of organizations do to figure out what waste they produce,” Berry said. “Knowing your waste stream is a really critical step to helping become more sustainable overall and I see lots of applications if they want to go into applied careers in sustainability.”

Ursinus and the Perkiomen Valley School District have partnered in the past on initiatives such as the Welcome Home Project and Arboretum, which is located near the campus of the middle school. The waste audit is yet another great example of the growing partnership with Ursinus and the local community.

“We’re working again with a very valuable community partner while answering the questions that are valuable to us,” Berry said.