Athens Intermediate sixth-grade student, Danica Otten, decided to get involved in the Garbage to Garden program at her school after seeing a series of disturbing photos depicting mounds and mounds of garbage at some of the world’s largest landfills.

“In one of the pictures, it looked like a raccoon lived at the landfill, and it made me think that could be us,” she said. “If we keep making so much garbage, one day, the earth will be one giant landfill.”

Fortunately, for environmentally concerned students like Otten, sixth-grade science and social studies teacher Chauncey Gregg has made recycling a priority at the school.

Last year, Gregg was inspired after observing the kitchen recycling program at Camp McDowell during a class field trip. Gregg and her students saw firsthand how the camp managed cafeteria waste through a sorting program that separated recyclables, food waste for compost and garbage bound for the landfill.

“I thought, ‘How great would it be to bring a project like this back to Athens Intermediate so our students can be more mindful of the environment?’” Gregg said.

Piggybacking on the school’s already active classroom and office recycling program, Gregg and her team of recyclers, the Green Eagles, brought the G2G program to the school’s largest waste producer — the cafeteria.

During the 2015-2016 school year, the G2G program cut the amount of landfill waste produced in the cafeteria by a whopping 62 percent.

Using money from a grant awarded to the program by the Athens City Schools Foundation, Gregg bought a high-capacity floor scale, heavy-duty trash cans, garden equipment and a rotating compost bin.

After each of the four lunch periods, Green Eagles stand behind a row of trash cans, making sure that students place their garbage in the appropriate cans. Each is marked with a label telling students where to throw plastic, styrofoam, cardboard or landfill-bound waste. At the end of each lunch block, members from the team hoist the landfill cans onto the scale, tracking exactly how many pounds of garbage the school creates daily.

Carter said she volunteers her time at the sorting line because she thinks recycling is a better solution to throwing everything away.

“If it will help keep our environment clean, our schools should do it,” she said.

After the student teams separate recyclable material from the garbage, TVA Recycling picks up the potentially reusable material.

“Our students believe that with each milk carton recycled, they are advocating for a cleaner, healthier environment,” said Gregg. “They are taking these concepts to their families and friends in hopes of starting recycling and composting in their own homes.”

Once spring rolls around, students will add another trash can to collect food waste for compost. They’ll use the compost to condition the soil in the organic garden beds located in the school yard. Gregg hopes that Limestone County Master Gardeners will return this year to help students plant daffodil bulbs, native plants and vegetables.

Recently, the G2G program has attracted the attention of the United States Department of Agriculture. The federal agency awarded AIS’s G2G program with a “Best Practice Award” in the “Farm to School” category.

“The fact that we were the only school in the Southeast region to receive this national USDA award is a big deal,” Tandy Norris, Child Nutrition Program Coordinator for Athens Schools, said.

Norris presented the award to Gregg and G2G team leaders Chase Smith, Daniel Sharp and Marjorie Diaz during a November Athens City Schools Board of Education meeting.

Gregg hopes to see the G2G program grow at AIS and eventually spread to all of Athens schools.