Lunch ends. A student tosses a half-eaten sandwich into a green bin, drops their plastic leftovers from a morning Starbucks run into a blue one and hurries off to class. In mere hours, both bins are empty once more. Though the trash cycle may seem like a short process, this journey is just beginning.
The most consequential step of the trash cycle happens inside Harker. Our system is designed to guide that choice: green bins for compost, blue bins for recycling, smaller black bins for landfill and designated boxes for recycling clean paper.
Sustainability Coordinator and chemistry teacher Andrew Irvine notes that the life cycle of trash begins with the waste created.
“Lunchtime is where we generate most of our waste.” Irvine said. “We haven’t calculated for a while, but our food waste totals above 100 pounds. We’re talking about over 1,000 people eating food.”
According to Irvine, one misplaced item, whether it be a plastic wrapper in compost or food in recycling, can contaminate an entire stream of trash.
“Reaching our sustainability goals does take compliance from students and from adults, which is not always 100%,” Irvine said. “It takes slowing down and thinking about putting things into the right place.”
Harker recently swapped large blue “other” bins for smaller black ones. While large green bins for organic waste dominate campus, smaller “other” bins are intentionally limited. Harker’s ultimate goal is to fundamentally change student behavior when it comes to trash and waste by making the sustainable choice of composting easier.
“The idea for the new trash system is that all the waste from the school should be compostable, so that’s why we have the huge compost bins,” Green Team officer Sasha Nazarenko (11) said. “And then hypothetically there shouldn’t be a lot of plastic waste, so that’s why we have the small other bins. The difference in size is meant to encourage people to think before throwing things away and not default to the black bins.”
Reducing waste
In light of the challenges of recycling effectively, a good policy is to simply avoid plastics in the first place. Harker implemented several policies to reduce plastic waste. For example, the kitchen moved toward compostable and reusable plates, replacing disposable paper bowls. In Manzanita, students also use compostable cups and forks, which are a more sustainable alternative to plastic ones.
Beyond the cafeteria, Harker also donates furniture, runs textile recycling programs and encourages long-term use of merchandise to limit unnecessary production.
“Harker has wonderful resources, and when we upgrade our resources, I try to make sure to donate equipment as much as I can,” Irvine said. “We donated 10 very nice microscopes with the help of a teacher up in San Francisco to a school there, we’ve donated furniture to Santa Rosa Valley public schools and we have donated furniture to the Salvation Army.”
Harker’s waste system depends on its users. Simple actions, like sorting waste correctly, taking less food and avoiding single use plastics can significantly impact outcomes.
Once bins are full, waste is collected by Harker’s partnered hauler, Republic Services. Haulers collect, transport and dispose of waste materials from residential or commercial areas. From Harker, waste can be sent either to landfills or to the more environmentally-friendly paths of recycling and composting.
Republic Services has an 80,000 square foot, 55-million-dollar facility designed to process up to 110 tons of waste per hour. With four separate processing lines for different forms of trash to maximize recovery rates, sorting aims to recover as much reusable material as possible.
Compost
Compost is nutrient-rich, decomposed organic matter created by microorganisms breaking down kitchen and garden waste. Though usually done in smaller scales in homes, institutions that produce more waste often send organic materials to specialized waste haulers. If compost is deemed clean enough by the hauler, it is then transported to a nearby composting facility. There, organic material like food scraps, compostable containers and paper products break down through microbial processes into nutrient rich soil that can be used in agriculture or landscaping.
Republic Services’ local general manager Joe Chu commented on the company’s sorting process.
“A significant challenge is contamination, which occurs when items that don’t belong in a recycling or compost stream are mixed in,” Chu said. “Organic processing technology has limits, and when contaminants such as glass or rigid plastics are found in compost loads, the entire load may be unusable.”
When organic waste ends up in landfills, it behaves differently from materials like plastic. Plastics last for hundreds of years because of their strong carbon-carbon bonds that are uncommon in nature. Food waste, by contrast, when compacted and buried without oxygen, begins to decompose. It produces methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. This process turns what could have been a green resource into a source of emissions.
“Food waste is really bad for landfills, so it’s really helpful to be reusing it,” Sasha said. “If you compost it, it can be turned into things like fertilizer, so it’s just a win-win: we’re able to simultaneously protect our environment and help it even more by reusing our waste and finding new ways to deal with it.”
By improving soil structure, providing a slow release of essential nutrients and increasing water retention, compost creates a healthy environment for diverse ecosystems. Known for its plentiful plants, Harker’s gardens benefit from composted soil. However, these benefits depend on the community disposing of waste correctly.
“Get to know what belongs in each bin and encourage others to do the same,” Chu said. “When the campus sorts correctly, it keeps more waste out of landfills and strengthens Harker’s sustainability efforts.”
Recycled Materials
Recyclables are sent to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), where machines and workers sort items by type: paper, metals and certain plastics. Large conveyor belts, air blowers and manual sorting that all work together to separate materials based on weight and composition. Once sorted, materials are compressed into bales and sold to manufacturers.
While some may assume recycling is the best solution, it’s not as effective as many imagine it to be.
“Not a lot of plastics actually end up getting recycled, it’s usually a pretty small percentage,” Green Team officer Ishita Konakanchi (10) said. “Small mistakes, like a banana peel in a recycling bin or plastic in compost, can redirect entire, clean batches to landfills.”
Although sorting facilities attempt to remove contaminants, success isn’t guaranteed. Thin plastic films, like wrappers and bags, are especially problematic.
“There’s no post-recycling market for plastic films,” Irvine said. “Even if a material can be recycled, it often isn’t — especially thin plastics like wrappers and bags.”
Furthermore, the limitations of recycling extend beyond sorting facilities themselves. Some companies will overstate the effectiveness of their sustainability and recycling policies in a deceptive practice known as “greenwashing.”
“Some companies pretend that they’re doing things that are better for the environment,” Ishita said. “Truly, it’s just a marketing tactic and their solution may not really be helping as much as they are. For example, many aren’t actually able to convert all of the plastic and the waste that they’re getting into repurposed materials. So they end up with more than they could handle and that just leads to more waste.”
In California, less than 15% of plastic is recycled as of 2025, with many common items processed at only single-digit rates. Unrecycled plastics remain in storage after collection or are simply sent to landfills, where they can cause microplastic and chemical pollution. At Harker and beyond, the pathway taken by our trash reflects collective choices that provide the opportunity to do better for our environment.