Vision

We are a brand new K-8 school, which means there are lots of opportunities to initiate sustainable practices. Our students learned about composting and how it works in their Home Economics class and decided that we could expand composting beyond just the junior high students. Our project is kick-starting a school-wide composting program that will become a part of our school culture. The main goal of the project was to create less waste in our school, however, our project has developed and will now involve our community and will include more sustainable impacts than only minimizing waste. We will be using the compost for our own school gardens and we will also share our compost with community members.

Action

We purchased compost containers and bags for every classroom in the school. We also purchased large bins for our school yard to mix and treat the compost. Our students have done more research on the composting process and will be educating other classes in the upcoming month and at a September assembly. We have purchased eco-friendly incentive prize packages that include items such as lunch bags, reusable ziplocs, and tupperware. As you can imagine the magnitude of this project, we have begun this year by testing our composting in our own class and one other volunteer class. Both classes weighed their accumulated compost for several weeks. By the end of the trial, we have concluded that we composted an average of 1.065kg per week. Using this data, we can predict that a class will compost an average of 4.262kg per month and 42.62kg throughout the year.

Reflection & Celebration

Once all the classes begin the program, our school will be composting an average of 1065.500kg for the school year, and that is a low estimate!

We are excited to continue educating others in our school about the benefits of composting and can’t wait to use our compost here in our school gardens.