Union Member Creates Award-Winning Recycling Program

In September, 1989, the practice of “character education” was just coming into its own. That’s when Sherry Force, a Metro Schools employee and SEIU member who was also very concerned about the environment, believed that she could help the environment and educate her students about social responsibility at the same time. Sherry discovered that a school-based recycling drop-off along with other hands–on environmental activities would promote positive-action behaviors and values like caring, citizenship, respect, responsibility, integrity, and commitment--to name just a few. Simultaneously, such activities would also lay the groundwork for a much-needed change in attitudes and behaviors regarding environmental awareness. Sherry hoped that the values of stewardship could also be instilled in young children that they would take with them through the rest of their lives.

“I started Granbery's recycling drop-off & recycling program in September of 1989 in part to help convince city leaders that people would recycle if given a consistent opportunity to do so,” Sherry says. “That's more than 2 years before the city did anything to recycle since their first curbside program didn’t get introduced until 1992.

Since 1994, Granbery Elementary students have been demonstrating how simple it is to learn to separate out the food waste. Within weeks of an award-winning story on Granbery's cafeteria program airing on WPLN in 1995, the Tennessee Department of Corrections began replicating Granbery's approach in its Morgan County facility. It proved so effective that this food-separation/composting approach was implemented throughout TDOC's facilities with a subsequent 75% diversion of its waste stream and a similar reduction in its annual solid waste budget (from $500,000 to $100,000).

Granbery's program has received numerous environmental awards and recognitions on local, state and national levels.
“I encourage people to duplicate what we started at Granbery in their own school,” Sherry says. “Our program can be replicated in other schools by identifying and compensating ‘environmental coaches’. A centralized composting & collection system would be needed in urban areas but in rural areas, a working partnership with local farms would be ideal.”

Sherry’s passion and knowledge demonstrates that the best ideas on how to make our community a better place to live start from the people who are on the front lines—public employees.