DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY SPONSORS
KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL "WASTE IN PLACE" WORKSHOPS
Where are the citizens and officials who will make tomorrow's decisions about solid waste? They're in your classroom today.
The Department of Environmental Quality has been working with teachers across the state offering the Keep America Beautiful "Waste in Place" workshops.
Teachers will use "Waste In Place" in their classrooms to increase students' understanding of waste and how communities can manage waste effectively and safely. This is a marvelous opportunity for teachers to become environmental educators. With today's students more interested in their environment and more willing than ever before to accept personal responsibility, it's crucial that we provide them with the understanding that managing waste is not an unsolvable problem - there are options available that will serve communities for generations to come.
The Keep America Beautiful "Waste In Place" Curriculum Guide is a recently revised publication of Keep America Beautiful, Inc., which teaches an integrated approach to the management of municipal solid waste. It is an activity-based program composed of detailed and comprehensive lessons on litter prevention, waste reduction, recycling, composting, waste-to-energy and landfills. By providing this valuable resource to classroom teachers, it is our goal that their students will become more aware of the sources of municipal waste, the characteristics of this waste and the various options for handling it.
The "Waste In Place" curriculum guide for grades K-6 builds critical thinking, processing, and problem solving skills through imaginative, hands-on lessons. This interdisciplinary curriculum has 37 lesson plans grouped by subject.
Students learn about:
- Preventing litter
- Managing solid waste
- Source reduction
- Recycling
- Composting
- Sanitary landfills
- Waste-to-energy combustion
A Keep America Beautiful "Waste In Place" workshop was conducted for teachers in Tangipahoa Parish. The workshop was sponsored by the Tangipahoa Parish Regional Landfill and was part of the waste management educational program for which the landfill received a $10,000 litter abatement grant from the Department of Environmental Quality. Landfill supervisor Hugh "Buddy" Till, Jr., on receiving the grant, stressed the importance of education for proper waste management in the parish.
Ms. Jeanie Baum, a third grade teacher from Freshwater Elementary in Livingston Parish and Ms. Mary Gutierrez, a fifth grade teacher from Brownsfield Elementary in East Baton Rouge Parish conducted the "Waste In Place" workshop. Ms. Baum and Ms. Gutierrez also work through the Evlyn J. Daniel Foundation to conduct these workshops. These two teachers have conducted "Waste In Place" workshops statewide for the Department of Environmental Quality.
Ms. Baum speaks to a group of Tangipahoa Parish teachers.
 
Tangipahoa Parish teachers conduct hands-on activities from the "Waste In Place" curriculum guide.
Parish representatives and teachers who attended the workshop hope to spread a positive attitude about proper waste management in the parish, as teachers take what they learned at the workshop back to their students.
For more information regarding the "Waste In Place" workshops for teachers, please email karen.fisher@la.gov.
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