Seventh grade math students at Marysville Middle School are working on a real-life equation: how much garbage have they diverted from landfills through a recycling program that may soon be adopted district-wide?

The answer: more than six school buses full just this school year at MMS.

Last fall, custodian Matt Edgerton submitted an idea to a contest sponsored by the employees' union, SEIU Local 925, called "Everybody Wins." His proposal, which won first place, called for replacing the 100,000-plus Styrofoam lunch trays thrown away annually from the cafeteria with environmentally-friendly paper trays. The district was awarded a $20,000 grant from the union to implement Edgerton's idea.

Realizing that the program's success would depend on buy-in from the school's staff and students, Edgerton formed The Green Team, a coalition of students, teachers, managers, parents and the building principal at Marysville Middle School. Together, the Green Team formulated an ambitious recycling program that went beyond replacing the lunchroom trays.

"The kids separate their lunch waste into three separate containers for garbage, recyclables and compostables," Edgerton explained. "We're all blown away by the participation rate, even though there was skepticism about getting the kids to take the time to do that."

The school custodian, who is assigned to Allen Creek Elementary, gives credit to the students for the program's success.

"All it takes is confidence in the kids," he said. "They are taking that one extra second to think about what they're throwing away, to make decisions about recycling. The kids are the ones who did this."

To illustrate the effectiveness of the school's unique conservation program, four students from Eric Stohl's seventh grade math class calculated the volume of a school bus and a dumpster. The students, Julia Krasivsky, Brittany Allsbury, Sydney Greene and Joel Scott, found that an empty school bus could hold the contents of 10 dumpsters, plus a little more.

"We're saving about two dumpsters each week," said Edgerton. Since the program began in October, that equals approximately 56 dumpsters full of trash. Calculated over a full 9-month school year, the savings translates to more than 70 dumpsters, or a little more than six school buses full of garbage.

The recyclable trays cost a few pennies more than the Styrofoam version they replaced, but the grant money covered the program's start-up cost. Additional savings on the school's utility bills, so far estimated at between $4,000 and $5,000, also help support the cost of the program.

Edgerton met with Jim Baker, the district's financial director, to crunch the numbers and make sure the district wouldn't incur any new costs for the program. Baker was a "huge fan" of the idea, said Edgerton, and determined that there would be no effect on the educational budget since the initial costs were covered by the grant and ongoing expenses would be offset by utility savings.

So what led to this innovative concept?

In his role as school custodian, Edgerton was overwhelmed by the number of trash bags hauled out of the cafeteria. His "aha" moment came when he was trying to make room in a dumpster for more trash.

"The Styrofoam trays don't bend, so they'd stack up at odd angles and take up a lot of room," he explained. "We'd get into the dumpsters and jump up and down on them to break them down and make more room. I just thought, 'there's got to be a better solution'. And the paper trays just made a lot of sense."

The program has been so successful at Marysville Middle School, the district expanded it to the Marysville Secondary Campus, comprised of A&T High School, Heritage High School and 10th Street Middle School, on May 13.

"It's great to pilot the program at high schools," said Edgerton, "but what I'm really looking forward to is introducing it at the elementary school level. Getting kids to adopt good habits early can turn them into lifelong recyclers."

According to Robin Kelson, communications specialist for SEIU, the MMS recycling program has resulted in savings that include:

* 90 percent reduction of cafeteria-related waste sent to the landfill

* 50 percent reduction of building-wide waste sent to the landfill

* 24 tons of greenhouse gases reduced-the equivalent of taking six cars off the road

* 25 tons of waste composted

* 80 tons of waste diverted from landfills

* $5,000 savings to the district's utility bill

Addressing the math students as they completed their calculations, Edgerton praised their efforts. "You guys at Marysville Middle School have started something great this year."