A waste diversion team is made up of several different people that work to collect, properly dispose and sort your trash, recycling and compost. Waste diversion includes trash, recycling and compost. Team members are made up of custodians and cafeteria workers, collection truck drivers and loaders, and facility sorters. As a team, they work together to get your items from your collection bin to the landfill or recycling/composting facility.
Once materials are at a recycling facility, a sorter helps to go through the material to pick out things that can’t be recycled and ensures the things that can be recycled go to the correct area to be sent off and made into something new. Composting facilities and landfills utilize large machinery to ensure the right things are there and are properly getting disposed of or composted.
Why are Waste Diversion Teams important?
Martin Luther King Jr., a very famous civil rights activist, stood up for the rights of people just like you are standing up for your belief in recycling. During one of his campaigns he spoke on how “all labor has dignity” which included waste team members.
From Kamala Harris’s ‘The Truths we Hold’:
As part of [his campaign] effort, Dr. King had gone to Memphis in 1968 to join black sanitation workers in their fight for basic decency. Day in and day out, these workers rode the trucks that hauled away the city’s garbage. The city did not provide uniforms; instead, workers were forced to dirty their own clothes on the job. They worked long hours without water to drink or a place to wash their hands. “Most of the [trash cans] have holes in them,” one sanitation worker recounted. “Garbage leaking all over you.”
For this hard work, critical work, they received little more than minimum wage, the lowest possible wage that the government will allow employers to pay. They didn't get overtime pay. They had no sick leave. If they were injured at work and needed time to heal — as happened often — they were likely to be fired. And if bad weather made trash collection impossible, they were sent home without pay. Many didn’t even make enough money to feed their families.
When the city refused to pay the families of two sanitation workers who [were injured on the job], it became too much for the others to bear. With great courage, 1,300 Memphis sanitation workers went on strike, refusing to work while demanding safer conditions, better pay and benefits, and recognition of their union. They were on strike for their families, for their children, and for themselves. It was, above all else, a battle for dignity. The signs they held at marches said simply: I AM A MAN.
When Dr King arrived at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, in Memphis, on March 18, 1968, a crowd of 25,000 people had gathered to hear him speak.
“So often we overlook the work and significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not
in the so-called bog jobs,” he said. “But let me say to you tonight, that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.”
Your waste diversion teams are important in your community and schools. They may even be someone you care about.
Who is on a waste diversion team? How do you become a waste diversion team member?
Custodians and Cafeteria Workers are the people in your schools that help ensure trash, recycling and compost are picked up, sorted properly, and brought to the collection bin to go to the landfill or recycling/composting facility. They are like human collection trucks and loaders that go around the school to pick up the things that need to be thrown away or recycled. Most often custodian and cafeteria workers apply for their job and get training to ensure they do the job right. They want to ensure they help keep your school clean!
What are the different collection bins, carts, & dumpsters?
What are the different collection trucks?
