BC student fought her school board for composting and recycling
Melody Silva sorting garbage for a waste audit. Photo by: Natasha Kong
By Patricia Lane & Melody Silva
Melody Silva doesn’t give up. This 18-year-old from British Columbia’s Saltspring Island began pressing her school in Grade 10 to provide plastic recycling and composting. To her frustration and despite a strong economic argument and widespread student and community support, the school board remains mostly intransigent. Melody is off to university this fall, but she has made sure younger students are trained and still on the case. Melody was a recipient of the 2026 NYCAA from the Institute for Sustainability Education and Action (I-SEA)
Tell us about your project.
In Grade 10, I easily persuaded the student council to ask the school authorities to implement school-wide composting and hard and soft plastic recycling. Nothing happened. I felt a bit lost.
I volunteered with Transition Salt Spring, and one of my mentors suggested I apply for grant funding to try again. At the start of Grade 12, I got funding for the school’s Earth Club to do a school-wide trial, audit the results, develop recommendations and train other students in climate advocacy.
We engaged 20 students in workshops led by climate activist Fig Mulder. During these workshops, we developed the recycling pilot and audited the school’s waste. We were horrified that 75 per cent of it could have been composted on the island. The remainder was mostly recyclable plastic, currently shipped to a landfill in Washington State to avoid substantial fines associated with bringing unsorted waste to our local landfill.
We set 69 recycling bins around the school and went to every classroom asking students to use them. One month later, we collected the waste generated on a particular day. We sorted it in the school’s multipurpose lunchroom, so other students could see what we were doing.
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