This edition of the Earth Matters newsletter is brought to you by the Pierce County Environmental Education Program! Learn more about us at PierceCountyWa.gov/EnviroEd.

Schools Can Take Action to Reduce Food Waste

If you have been to a school cafeteria, you may have seen how much food gets wasted! 

About 10% of waste going to our Pierce County landfill is food waste and we know that Pierce County’s 175 public schools, and more than 50 private schools, contribute to that. 

Methane produced by food going to the landfill is a major contributor to greenhouse gases right here in our communities. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than half of greenhouse gas emissions from landfills comes from wasted food. 

How schools can help

What can schools do about it? One easy way is to set up share tables at breakfast and lunch. Pierce County has worked with the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department to set up guidelines to share uneaten food safely. Learn more on our website.

Composting is another way to reduce food waste. Your school can arrange collection and Pierce County can help by donating materials for a waste sorting station during mealtimes. Contact us at EnviroEd@PierceCountyWa.gov to get started. 

The Washington State Legislature passed organics management laws in 2022 and 2024 that require many businesses in Washington to divert organic materials, including food waste, away from landfills. Many public and nonprofit entities such as schools, churches, and hospitals are contributing to these efforts to prevent food waste from ending up in landfills. 

Special kudos

Kudos to our school partners who have been vermicomposting with worms at schools to manage their food waste:

Ready to get started?

If you are a student or you work with a school and would like to learn more about reducing food waste and wasted food from going to the landfill, please reach out to us at EnviroEd@PierceCountyWa.gov. 

Dr. McGehee is passionate about empowering residents of Pierce County to become active participants in building a more sustainable future. By leveraging his background in education and community engagement, he seeks to collaborate with local stakeholders—including schools, nonprofits, and government agencies—to create strategies that address local environmental challenges and promote sustainability.

His approach centers on fostering a shared understanding of sustainability, providing residents with the knowledge and tools to take meaningful action, and creating opportunities for ongoing collaboration. Through these efforts, he aims to build stronger, more resilient communities that are equipped to tackle both current and future environmental challenges.

1st-8th grade “garbologists” from Miss Brown’s GROW classes at Columbia Crest A-STEM Academy in Ashford wanted to understand the waste trends at their school. 

With the help of our Environmental Education team, they sorted one day's worth of school trash into recyclable, food waste, and landfill categories. 

Students discovered that 25% of the trash was recyclable and 33% of the items were food waste. With the data to back them up, they are engineering new waste reduction strategies and will implement them over the next few months.

For their first step, students built five worm composting bins to help recycle some of the food waste into compost to improve soil health in their school garden. After two days of construction, the wood bins were ready for the worms to move in.

A special thanks to Eatonville School District’s GRITS Farm program, whose students are operating a successful food waste worm composting operation. They supplied hundreds of healthy and hungry red wiggler worms for the Columbia Crest worm compost bins.

Learn more about the Environmental Education Program and submit a request:

Reduce Holiday Food Waste

Each week, the average Pierce County household throws away about three pounds of edible food, which only increases during the holiday season.

Multiply that by all our households and it quickly adds up to thousands of tons of food going to the landfill!

Get started

Here are some easy ways to get started reducing food waste—during the holiday season and the rest of the year!

• Revamp your leftovers: Your leftovers aren’t just yesterday’s dishes, they’re today’s tasty new meals! Try repurposing your leftovers into fresh options. Save bones and vegetable scraps to make a flavorful soup stock. Wrap up leftover meat, rice, and veggies in tortillas or add lettuce to make a salad. Tip: When in doubt, search online for recipes using your leftover ingredients.

• Freeze early: If you think you may not eat leftovers before they spoil, freeze them! Freezing preserves nutrients. You can do this with raw ingredients too, if you don’t think you will be able to cook them in time. It takes a lot of resources to produce the food we eat—don’t let it go to waste.

• Meal planning: Cook once, eat all week. Save time on busy weeknights by prepping multiple meals at once. Search online for “cook once, eat all week recipes” to start planning your meal. Once you have a grocery list developed, double check your pantry for ingredients you already have. You’ll only need to go grocery shopping once! Tip: Check out our free meal planning notepad and storage guide at PierceCountyWa.gov/FoodWaste.

Check out our Winter Holiday Reminders webpage for information on where to recycle trees, lights, and more. You can also find a list of sustainable gift ideas to gift memorable experiences to family and friends.

December Sustainable Solutions Classes

Come learn with us in December! Sustainable Solutions, our free class series, is designed to equip you with tools to create a more livable community. Check out the class schedule below and register today! Learn more at PierceCountyWa.gov/SustainableSolutions.

First Climate Café Combines Cats, Conversation

The first YESS (Youth Engaged in Sustainable Solutions) Climate Café gave seven Pierce County high school students a space to discuss climate change solutions and what climate change means for our lives.

Special guests were on hand to break the ice: the cats of Catffeinated Cat Café in Puyallup, where the conversation was held.

Our team hosted and facilitated the October conversation, which brought up stories of experiencing local climate impacts like flooding, wildfire smoke, extreme heat, and more. Students spoke about difficulty finding accurate information on climate change that isn’t connected to opinion or political influence.

The group also discussed the power in community and how we can find hope through working together and taking climate actions that bring us joy! 

Future YESS Climate Cafés

Two themed climate cafés for high school students will be held in 2025:

Updates about the cafés and registration information will be posted on our Climate Café webpage closer to the event dates.

YESS Youth Film Festival to Return in 2025

Young Pierce County filmmakers take note: the “YESS Youth Film Festival: The Climate of Our Communities” will return in Spring 2025. 

High school and college students can submit their films to various categories tied to a theme around climate and environmental justice in Pierce County. The theme this year is “Climate Solutions.” 

The winners will have their films screened at a local theater.

Submission information will be posted at PierceCountyWa.gov/YESS in early 2025.

Apply for an EPA Award

The application deadline for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) President’s Environmental Student and Teacher Awards is Jan. 15, 2025.

Projects eligible for the awards can apply to a variety of environmental topics, including (but not limited to) climate change, environmental justice, food waste, litter in waterways, and recycling. 

Application and eligibility information is available on EPA’s President's Environmental Youth Award page and EPA’s Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators page.

STEAM Education for Climate Literacy Back in 2025

Teachers in Tacoma and Pierce County are invited to register for our upcoming STEAM Education for Climate Literacy workshop series.

Enjoy up to six FREE clock hours, comprehensive lesson plans, and an engaging learning experience during the series, which runs from January to March.

Sign up for one session or the entire series and receive a Zoom link along with all the necessary class materials. Each workshop includes both a primary and secondary lesson plan. 

Read with us:

• A Walk in the Woods with My Brain on Fire, Inside Climate News
• Postcard from Seattle, Birthplace of Modular Home Design, The Tyee

Watch with us:

• Our partners at Urban Green - City of Tacoma spotlight South Sound environmental efforts and showcase fun and easy ways to get involved in sustainable living practices.

Do with us:

• Salish Sea Science Roundtable Speaker Series meets every month on Zoom. Visit the Puget Sound Institute's website to learn more, check out previous roundtables, and register. The next roundtables are from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Dec. 3 and Jan. 7.
• Fix-it Nights at the Tacoma Tool Library are held from 4-5:30 p.m. every Thursday.
• Remakery at various locations. Check out events on fabric and paper boxes, fiber cycle exploration, tees and tunics, plastic smithed earrings, pompom garlands, etc.!
• Community Education in Action Series: Description: "Unleash your creativity as we craft inspiring learning resources, shedding light on climate change through the lens of environmental and climate justice!" Upcoming virtual events:
• Exploring Community, Ecological, and Climate Resilience, 4:30-6 p.m. Dec. 3.
• Cultivating Co-Design for Thriving Climate-Resilient Communities, 4:30-6 p.m. Jan. 16.
• We’re evaluating solar potential at County buildings. But we need YOUR input! What’s important to you—resilience, electricity bill reduction, or something else? By completing our survey, you could win a solar lantern. 
• Salmon Saturdays: Visit Swan Creek Park to welcome home the spawning salmon. 12-2 p.m. Dec. 7 and 14.
• Climate Justice Learning Series - Climate Justice 101+ workshop: 5:30-7:30 p.m. Dec. 11 on Zoom.
• Ideas for winter break:
• Try a new outdoor winter adventure at a Pierce County park and learn about that space through our newly updated Interactive Map and resources.
• Keep busy by earning a Livable Pierce County patch.

We welcome your feedback on this newsletter! Share your thoughts.