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The High School Compost Initiative
I’m so glad you’re here! School kitchens and cafeterias can make a huge impact by composting their unused food. Scroll down and learn how you can help make a difference in your own school!
Why compost?
While the benefits of composting, and any recycling, are numerous... there are two main reasons why composting can make such a great impact in any community. especially in schools. The first of these is the prevention of greenhouse gas emissions, and the second is the ending of the food and energy cycle by wasted food. To better understand this, click on the buttons below to learn more about why composting is so awesome!
01: build a community
In order to make change, it's crucial to have a like-minded community that will be willing to help you. So, spread the word! Talk to your peers, cafeteria managers/cooks, advisors, and principals! Emphasize the importance of composting and explain why it will make such a difference. Once you've gauged which of your peers may be interested, form a group! In my situation, I made an Environmental Club to tackle the composting issue and others! *But, before you tell too many people about this, make sure it's possible. Make sure there is a composting company in your area to ensure this endeavor will be possible. Or, ask if your community would be willing to give you a grant for a new composting facility!*
Make sure not to go into this phase with any assumptions and make sure your school's cafeteria staff is comfortable with any extra work they may have to do to get composting off the ground. Feel free to share the statistics of my school's composting program to convince people that you really can make a difference!!
02: gather information
Once you have a group to work with, it's time to figure out the details of your situation! A great starting point for this is taking food inventories. Here's what a food inventory may look like:
• Contact those working in your school's cafeteria. Assuming you've already explained the project to them, ask if it'd be alright if they left their trash in the cafeteria one day so you can use it for data.
• If they say it's okay, pick a date and get supplies! You'll need a scale, gloves, tarps, and buckets!
• Although it's not the most fun, going through your school cafeteria's waste (both food scraps and things like containers, disposable utensils/plates, etc.) supplies vital information. Lay out a tarp and dump out all of the waste. Separate it into piles: food waste, plastic, and paper are the major groups.
• Once you've done this, weigh each pile in separate buckets.
• Record your data! Figure out what percentage of the cafeteria's trash is compostable (food scraps/paper) and what percentage must cannot biodegrade (plastic, synthetic materials, etc.)
• At this point you'll have to gather up all of this trash and dispose of it the way your school normally would - likely by dumpster.
The gross part is over!! Now, it's time to figure out some other information. There are plenty more things to find out from your school, and to research. Here are a few important ones:
• Ask your principal/advisor about the company that takes your trash away. Figure out how much it costs.
• Find composting businesses near you. They're more common than you may think! Get in contact with some and ask if they'd be willing to collect compost from your school! Figure out what types of bins you would need to supply for them, and how it would work!
• Ask your school about the cost of its utensils and food containers (if it uses plastic/non-compostable utensils and containers). Then, research the costs of some compostable ones online - paper forks and knives, compostable plates, etc! *And make sure your kitchen staff would be comfortable with switching from plastic utensils/food containers to other types*
03: make a plan
Now it's time to contact any composting sites that you may know of in your community, or, if there are none... look into possible connections with farms or farmers who may appreciate compost for soil. In some cases, there are groups at Farmers' Markets that collect compost weekly or freelance farmers who would appreciate compost. Ask these resources when you could drop off your school's compost or when they could pick it up, and make sure your school is aware of everything that's happening.
Be prepared to troubleshoot if there's not many composting facilities near you, and don't be afraid to reach out to your local government to see if they'd be willing to build one. Also, everything may not be able to happen immediately for your school. Your cafeteria staff may prefer to only compost the food that they discard while making the lunches and not the food disposed of by the students eating lunch (because that's more likely to contain non-compostable items). You could start by just doing this and gradually move towards raising money for your school to buy compostable utensils and containers for food so that the chance of students putting non-compostable items into disposal bins would be far decreased. The bottom line is, your path of getting your school to compost may not look like that of other schools and may not be incredibly efficient, but remember that even composting a very small amount of food is way better than composting none!
04: take action
Once your school principals, cafeteria staff, and local farmers and/or composting sites have agreed to whatever composting arrangement you have decided upon, you can finally put your plan into action! You should be proud of the work you've done to make your school and your community a better place by protecting the environment and protecting the food and energy cycle. Be sure to let your cafeteria staff know that if they ever need the arrangement to change or need your help, that you will be there! And thank them for helping you to improve your school in a forward-thinking and sustainable way!
Outreach stats:
So far we've been able to reach x other schools and get x more composting programs started elsewhere! Between all of these schools, the initiative composts x pounds of food scraps each school year and contributes to x tons of greenhouse gases being prevented from emission into the atmosphere annually!
(drawing of different schools would go here w/ the name of them underneath)