Not so sustainable...

I've noticed, as the weather has turned from cold to less cold, that the cities and towns have been using sand instead of salt on roads, sidewalks, and parking lots.  It has come to my attention that sand is apparently more friendly to the state of asphalt roads and parking lots.  There have been slightly less potholes and crevasses in the roads this year.  Happy driving to all you car-owning people.  

Picture this.  A public school in the private sector.  Non-profit.  A sustainability-conscious boss.  Sand covers the parking lot between the two campuses of the school.  One person is sweeping the remnants of sand covering the raised white lines that signify where to park.  He carefully creates piles in random places around the lot.  I see him collecting the sand in a trash barrel; I assume he is going to dump it along a designated area in the learning park (almost an acre of land to the right of the parking area).  Guess again.

Flash forward to school cafeteria.  Several students are refusing the meal or picking at the chef salad in front of them.  One refuses to eat and simply throws it all away.  Paper plates.  Paper milk cartons.  Chocolate milk with high fructose corn syrup.   Plastic cups for water.  Paper napkins and plastic utensils.  The trash bin is overflowing with mostly uneaten salad, orange peels, napkins, and half-drunk milk.  How wasteful...

Trash.  I walk with one of my students to take the trash to the dumpster, grateful for him volunteering in the first place.  We need not open the dumpster because its mouth is already agape.  What do we find?  A mouthful of sand.  The neat piles of sand previously placed in a trash receptacle are now to be found taking up a good three-quarters of the dumpster.  The trash almost didn't fit.  Curious. 

Seattle has a place to recycle sand, where it is cleaned and reused.  Where's Boston's initiative?