PHILADELPHIA – City officials joined with partners today at Philadelphia School District headquarters to award winners in the City’s inaugural CleanFUTURES program. CleanFUTURES is a contest-based citizen science and advocacy program to engage middle school and high school students in litter reduction.

Participants formed teams to compete with 21 schools in the Philadelphia School District to win awards and prizes. Each team logged and picked up litter on their school’s campus in order to better understand the origin and impacts of litter in their community.

“Programs like this show the importance of getting everyone involved in our litter reduction efforts, especially our students,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. “Now is the time to teach our children about the importance of sustainability, they are our future and will be the innovators who will further develop solutions to combat climate change.”

A joint effort of the Zero Waste and Litter Cabinet, the School District of Philadelphia’s GreenFutures Program, Keep Philadelphia Beautiful, and Litterati, Clean Futures utilized data to track the types of litter found on school grounds and then matched schools with the resources to find innovative ways to reduce that litter. Program funding was provided by the Mayor’s Fund for Philadelphia and its Innovation Fund, a program that provides seed funding to City pilot projects that emphasize process improvement, value creation, enhanced service delivery, government relations and cross departmental collaboration.

“We are grateful to our partners and to the Innovation Fund for supporting our CleanFUTURES proposal. Because of their investment, we were able to put our plans in motion to track waste in schools while also connecting students to the process of goods becoming trash and litter,” said Zero Waste and Litter Director Nic Esposito.

The Zero Waste and Litter Cabinet managed the administrative needs of the program, as well as grant funding secured in partnership with the School District. The School District’s GreenFutures team worked closely with the teachers to analyze the data and help them brainstorm projects.

“At the School District of Philadelphia, we believe that students deserve to attend clean, green and healthy schools so that they are in the best position to learn and grow,” said Dr. William R. Hite, Superintendent. “This project is in alignment with the District’s sustainability program, GreenFutures, and encourages students to become active partners in support of this vision while reinforcing positive and sustainable habits.”

Within each school, Clean Futures conducted outreach to science and sustainability-based classes and clubs. The analysis of this litter lead schools to take actions such as finding ways to reduce trash in overflowing cans in the school yard, bring more recycling and trash bins to their cafeterias, and establish awareness programs such as clean up days in the community and Zero Waste events at the schools.

“Keep Philadelphia Beautiful has been working in partnership with GreenFutures for four years to reinforce recycling and litter education.” said Kelly Offner, Executive Director of Keep Philadelphia Beautiful. “Since launching an in-classroom education program focused on litter, recycling, and leadership in 2015, we have reached over 11,500 students and visited over 40 percent of the City’s public schools.”

Litterati was responsible for covering all of the technology needs of the program. “Philadelphia is a shining example of how collaborative efforts can lead to a litter-free city, and we are honored to integrate Litterati’s technology, data, and educational curriculum into the public school system.” said Jeff Kirschner, CEO and founder of Litterati. “If we’re going to create long-term change, there’s no better place to start than with our kids.”

Litterati provided data evaluation and analysis for the CleanFUTURES program. Specifically, the Litterati package for each school included geofencing of the school area to create a digital boundary that maps litter type and location. This data was processed on the back end by Litterati and was compiled into a variety of report forms for the instructor and the school group.

In addition, Litterati offered its model curriculum to school instructors. These assets explore the vocabulary of litter, the geographic movement of litter, the philosophy of littering, the math to understand the data, the evaluation methods for how to use the data, and examples of how to successfully utilize the data to advocate for change in litter behavior and/or create more data-driven programs at their schools to prevent litter.