Vision

Our vision was to introduce our young students to the benefits of composting. We wanted to give them the applicable skills and knowledge on the importance of composting so that they can carry them over into their adult lives.

Action

We introduced a composting program in our school, in alignment with our current school breakfast program. After cooking and serving breakfast, our students and staff would dispose of any leftover food items in the appropriate compostable storage bins where it was then placed in our brand new electric composter, the Vitamix FoodCycler 50, which has a 2L capacity. We are able to run our composter twice during a school day, as each cycle takes approximately 4 hours. The composter has a capacity of 2L and we used it all last week. So from Monday, May 30 to Friday, June 3 we ran the composter approximately 10-12 times, and the end results have been amazing. We currently have a significant amount of nutrient-rich compost that we will be adding to our crops in our two new raised garden beds.

This project aligns with the theme of climate change because there is currently less waste going into landfills.
Our inspiration for this project was to teach children from a young age the importance of composting, so that as they get older they can continue this practice into their adult lives.
This project is important to our community so that we can help reduce our overall contribution to landfill tonnage. In our community, we typically always exceed the recommended tonnage, therefore composting material at the school level will help reduce the amount of waste produced, along with the amount of capital required to discard the waste.

Reflection & Celebration

The students thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the youth forum workshops, and they’ve commented that they’ve learned many new things. Students were very excited to help serve breakfast to our entire school, and then use the leftover organic waste in the electric composter. They were very surprised about how the compost ended up looking after it had cycled through the required stages. The students of Jakeman are in awe of the electric composter and have already mastered how to use it!

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