Leadership in Environmental Action Projects


Leadership in Environmental Action Projects is a student action program that reduces, reuses and recycles trash from schools and communities and informs people about local solid waste and resource issues. LEAP uses student/community partnerships and cooperative learning to achieve these goals. The St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District, using landfill tipping fee surcharges, funds LEAP.

One of the most important concepts that LEAP communicates to students and teachers is the difference between linear systems, which most man-made systems are, and cyclical systems, which all of nature's systems are. Our goal is to help people begin to appreciate the integral role of energy -- its use and conversion from one form to another -- and start to look at products as resources rather than as trash. Through participation in field trips, activities and projects, students begin to see the inefficiency and waste of a linear system vs. the benefits and practicality of cyclical systems. Better for plants, people and the planet.

More information about the success that schools have had working with the LEAP program can be found in the LEAPing Into Action Case Study Book. 


What's in a School's Trash?

Students participating in LEAP are constantly involved in hands-on learning. They often end up collecting, measuring and recording the trash they generate in a day, or analyzing the composition of trash generated by the entire school. The following information was obtained from LEAP school Waste Assessment and depicts a typical school's trash.


For More Information about LEAP

Contact Katherine Golden to find out about using LEAP at your school!

LEAP Lessons

Lessons from the LEAP program may include:

  • "Decomposers Detectives"
  • "Garbology 101"
  • "A Closer Look"
  • "Energy Chain"
  • "Paper Sleuths"
  • "Dollars and Sense"
  • and many more!

LEAP lessons are available to schools participating in the LEAP program, as well as one time on-demand lessons. 

They are free of charge to public and private schools in City of St. Louis and
St. Louis County, Jefferson County and
St. Charles County.

Click here for a more comprehensive list of LEAP lessons.


A student at Washington Montessori participates in the hands-on "Decomposer Detectives" lesson.