Lunchroom Composting Is
Reducing Waste
by Rowan Beck,
September 22, 2011, page 7.....

Recent budget cuts at CCS may have forced looking at things in a different light, but the school has been able to continue efforts in conservation and in understanding sustainability. This year the CCS cafeteria has added composting in hopes of reducing waste and ultimately gaining a cost savings in trash removal.
Charlotte resident, Abby Foulk, spearheaded the composting effort last May. In November of 2010, she attended an environmental action conference at Vermont Technical College. Composting at schools was being discussed and, according to her, she had an “ah-ha!” moment. Excited about the idea, she returned to Charlotte with a proposal. Due to the amount of change already underway with the new building and administration, she waited until May to create a committee called the 4R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot). This committee consists of two community members, two teachers, two para-educators and both principals. Abby arranged for presentations by students who were already composting at CVU, and looked to the Ferrisburgh School as a model. Ferrisburgh composts on-site, but the school is smaller.
“It was really the perfect time to do it,” Abby said. CCS was in the process of renegotiating its trash removal contract and was able to switch to Casella, which provides hauling of food wastes to the new Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) composting facility in Williston. The previous carrier did not offer composting. CSWD markets the end product under the name Intervale Compost Products, even though the facility is no longer located in Burlington’s Intervale.
The school currently uses two dumpsters, seven compost bins and one recycling bin. Since the composting began, Elizabeth Skypeck, manager of the cafeteria, noted, “We now have less than one trashcan a day. It used to be three or four.” She and several others have also noticed that the cafeteria is much cleaner than before the composting began. Dave LeBlanc, head custodian, has also noticed a decrease in trash. “It looks like our trash waste is less than anticipated, so we may require one less dumpster per month, which would result in savings overall. It may take a month or so to confirm this, though.”
Each day there are two shifts for monitoring and teaching the students how to separate the items on their lunch trays and in their lunchboxes into various bins for recycling and composting. As lunch comes to an end, the line around the table lengthens as the younger students are guided through the process. Colorful examples with instructions are hung on the wall behind the table. The line will get shorter over time as the students learn more about sorting. Each shift has two adults, and there are ten shifts, for a total of twenty volunteers. People sign up for a month at a time, and eventually it is hoped that the students will take over the majority of the shifts. There will still be adult supervision and involvement.
Overall, the 4R’s Committee hopes to “generate a sense of responsibility about conservation practices, provide knowledge, tools and ideas for waste reduction in our daily lives, increase sustainable practices which connect to curriculum (responsive classroom), healthy schools (wellness and care of physical environment), Farm-to-Table, food cycles and systems, energy and conservation.” Parents in the school community can find helpful tips on recycling and waste in the school’s newsletter which is distributed electronically every Wednesday. So far the composting has created quite a buzz among the students, and they are spreading the word to the parents. There has been less mess, less trash, and cleanup after lunch has become a little easier. This is one project that should save all the way around, from dollars to the environment. It will be interesting to see the results at the end of the year.