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Dashiell stands with a "trophy" made of plastic containers and an ice cream cone made out out of paper.
Paden 4th Grader Treasures Trash Pick-Up
Dashiell Schulte spends every recess picking up litter on the blacktop at Paden Elementary School. He also sorts trash after lunch every day. He is so committed to preventing litter, in fact, that last month Paden awarded him the “Stanley’s Plastics Cup.”
The 4th grader started doing this work last year, when he realized “it feels good to clean up trash.” At first, he picked up the litter with his bare hands and stuck it in his pockets. But then a teacher at the site gave him buckets and a pair of grabbers.
“That was great,” he says. “Now I can pick up even more.”
On a typical day, Dashiell picks up about 1.5 buckets of trash per day. But on some days, it’s as much as three buckets. And that’s all from other kids littering.
“You can see it blow from near the buildings across the blacktop,” he says. “Once I saw a piece of trash blow through the fence and into the water.”
That was frustrating.
Although his recess shifts are solo, Dashiell works with three other children to double check the Paden students’ trash sorting at lunch every day. (AUSD provides bins for compost, recycling, and landfill at all of its sites.) “It’s incredibly satisfying,” he says of this duty. “It’s like, ‘I just saved this plastic spoon from going in the recycling!’” (Most plastic utensils cannot be recycled because they’re made of the wrong kind of plastic and their shape can jam recycling machinery.)
"I appreciate his willingness to pick up materials around the school without being asked and the way he ignited interest for grade-level peers to join on his mission," Paden Principal Tri Nguyen says. "For Dashiell, every day is Earth Day."
Dashiell also monitors and grades the trash sorting in his classroom on a daily basis. “People make a lot of mistakes,” he says. “Yesterday the class got a C. But on average I give two A+’s per week.”
Dashiell’s commitment to picking up litter extends beyond his school.
After a major storm last December, for instance, he spent two weekend days cleaning up trash on the beach.
And over the last several years, Dashiell has developed a close bond with the Alameda County Industries (ACI) waste collector who serves his neighborhood. Due to John’s tutelage, Dashiell can easily describe how a waste collector uses the joystick and keypad inside the cab to control the “bin arm” that lifts and empties trash bins into the truck.  
“He’s been interested in garbage and a very committed community advocate since he was in preschool,” his mother, Andrea Dunlap, says.  
Paden’s mascot is the pelican, but that’s not this young environmentalist’s favorite bird. “I like shrikes,” he says. “Because they’re very brave. They’ll even chase Golden Eagles out of their territory. Also, when they want to eat their prey, they impale them on blackberry thorns or barbed wire. It’s a little bit gruesome, but it’s really cool, too.”