“I heard about the audit from the coordinator of the Lehigh Valley Food Policy when I was volunteering at the Rodale Institute Farm this past summer,” said Dane Sinks, a current junior at Liberty. “I decided that this was something I wanted to tackle because the audit seeks to make a big difference on a local level… and it could benefit a large school like Liberty.”

The audit that Sinks refers to is the “Student Food Waste Audit.” It was created through the combined efforts of the USDA, the EPA, and the University of Arkansas. The amount of trash most Americans throw away every month equals their body weight. In order to help reduce this excessive waste, the program strives to educate schools and students about the amount of food unnecessarily wasted in cafeterias.

The mission of the Student Food Waste Audit and the mission of Liberty’s “Greater Responsibility Among Students for Sustainability” Club (GRASS for short), are so similar that Sinks decided to pursue the audit, with the support of the club and faculty advisors Greg Zahm and Robert Andreucci. “The audit seeks to make a big difference through students on a local level,” says Sinks.

In order to maximize results and minimize cost, a small force of volunteers will perform the audit using common materials such as tables, buckets, bags, clipboards, etc. The audit will establish what exactly needs to be addressed at Liberty and will allow the club and school to implement clear paths of action to make the necessary changes in order to become more green and sustainable.

Science teacher and current coadvisor of GRASS, Greg Zahm, started the initiative with the “Recycling and Sustainability (R&S) Project” which exposed students to the idea of an environmentally-oriented club. Last school year (2016-2017) the GRASS Club was established as the umbrella organization. Since the official conception of the GRASS Club, it has succeeded in organizing and carrying out several fundraisers and projects. GRASS has received two $1,000 grants, one from a previous senior class and another from the BASD Foundation.

An example of the GRASS Club’s impact, the R&S Project has diverted enough recyclable material to fill 150 thirty-gallon containers, that “most likely would have been thrown away,” says Zahm. This is largely due to the extensive effort that Zham and over 75 student volunteers have made to spread awareness among the Liberty faculty and student body. Teachers were asked to clearly remind students of the importance of recycling and have been given signs to post above disposal containers that clearly state what can and cannot be recycled.

As the success of the R&S Project grows, the GRASS Club has gained momentum and has succeeded in putting a recycle bin in every classroom and in most hallways. One of the next steps in the process is acquiring enough trash cans to strategically place one next to each recycle bin in order to promote easy separation: trash in the trash and recycling in the recycling. Overall, the GRASS Club is doing great things for all of us in the name of our planet. They look forward to tackling new projects such as replacing the currant styrofoam lunch trays with reusable ones and making Liberty a greener, more sustainable place.