Seven Maine schools granted funds towards sustainable habits
ecomaine announced more than $9,500 in grant funding to 7 recipients of its 2022 School Recycling Grants, which are designed to raise recycling and composting awareness in schools and communities, and to help schools implement more efficient recycling programs or add composting to their waste collection.
Appletree School, Cape Elizabeth: Raised beds and soil for compost utilization
Fiddlehead Center for the Arts, Scarborough: Composting materials
Fiddlehead Center for the Arts and Sciences, Gray: Composting materials
King Middle School, Portland: countertop dishwasher, sporks, flatware organizer, and bus tubs to help replace the plastic-wrapped plastic utensils in their cafeteria.
Lyseth Elementary School, Portland: Composting materials
The Ecology Learning Center, Unity: Classroom waste sorting and collection systems infrastructure.
Westbrook Middle School: Classroom recycling infrastructure and a water bottle refill station.
Caleb Hemphill, Chair of ecomaine’s Outreach & Recycling Committee explains “ecomaine seeks to provide this funding to help jumpstart some of the programming around recycling, compost, and waste reduction. Providing resources to students to directly engage in thoughtful waste reduction and management is an important goal to us. I am very pleased to see such thoughtful and creative proposals from our students and educators.”
The recipients are located in many parts of the state, and proposed a variety of programs designed to divert waste from landfills.
Recipients were chosen by ecomaine’s Outreach and Recycling Committee based on the following criteria:
- Project outline and school commitment
- Ease of project replication
- Likelihood of success and program sustainability
- How compelling and worthy the funding is, overall
