EAST WENATCHEE — Eastmont junior Karissa Sanchez was more than happy to dive into a Dumpster Wednesday. She spotted a plastic bottle in a recycle bin for mixed paper and jumped in to grab it.

In the bins next to her, students dumped 32-gallon garbage cans full of paper they collected from classrooms and halls at Eastmont High School.

This is how the environmental club spends every Wednesday after school. It’s an effort that district officials want to see spread to all nine schools by next year.

“We have a mixed paper bin and a cardboard recycling bin coming for every school in the district,” said Patti Betzing, a math teacher who is coordinating the project as part of a doctorate program in administration.

The district spent nearly $4,000 on recycling bags and started installing them in classrooms this week. Massive school dumpsters will be replaced with smaller ones which are cheaper to empty.

Eastmont is already saving money on its garbage bills after it replaced foam lunch trays with reusable plastic ones. They look like hamburger baskets, and they now serve students at the high school, junior high and Sterling Intermediate.

At Eastmont High, the new trays saved more than $5,000 in disposal costs this year, Betzing said.

“It’s amazing how much less garbage we have,” Betzing said. “When we talk about reducing the garbage bill, the foam trays have got to go. That’s just wrong putting those in a landfill.”

Elementary schools and Clovis Intermediate are still using plastic foam because they don’t have any working dishwashers to clean the new trays, said Suzy Howard, the district’s food service director.

The district replaced the dishwasher at Kenroy Elementary, which will begin using the reusable plastic trays this month, she said. The district is collecting bids for a new dishwasher at Lee Elementary. Until the district can afford more dishwashers, staff will deliver and collect reusable trays at the other schools, Howard said.

Overall, the district’s garbage bill totaled nearly $142,000 last school year, said Superintendent Garn Christensen. The goal is to shrink it by 10 to 25 percent, he said.

Half of the money the schools save in garbage collection will be given to custodians for new tools, ladders and equipment. It’s an incentive for the janitorial crew to collect recycling in addition to their regular duties, Christensen said.

Eastmont also installed security cameras at school service entrances to deter vandalism, theft and illegal dumping.

“People bring couches, mattresses, washers and dryers,” Betzing said. “It causes us to fill up a lot faster, so we have to call to have them dumped much more frequently.”

Because of illegal dumping, December is one of Eastmont’s most expensive garbage bills, even though staff and students are gone for nearly half the month, she said.

Betzing said the district would like to recycle aluminum cans, but so far she hasn’t found any groups willing to collect and maintain the aluminum bins year-round.

Ten years ago, Eastmont had a district-wide recycling program that was a model other school districts aspired to, said Ron Draggoo, director of Douglas County Solid Waste Programs.

Bob Brown, then agriculture teacher at the junior high, ran the program as part of a class. Students collected, compressed and sold the district’s recyclables for years.

Six or seven years ago, the program was downsized because it wasn’t cost effective, said Lloyd Thompson, a junior high ag teacher. Different administrators had different priorities, some of which weren’t recycling.

The FFA students still collect mixed paper at the junior high, he said. The seven tons they collected earned a few hundred dollars for the program last year, Thompson said.

“They get pretty enthusiastic about it,” he said. “It’s fun. Every year the kids take charge. They lead the effort and make the contacts.”

Rachel Schleif: 664-7139

schleif@wenatcheeworld.com