This week on the blog we talked to Ginny, our compost data number-cruncher, to learn about Boxerwood’s other major composting endeavors. The Backyard Compost Challenge is a wonderful way to encourage our community to compost at home, but our work doesn't stop there. To help bring about a culture of composting all through the county, Boxerwood is partnering with local schools. With funding from World Wildlife Fund, Boxerwood has helped launch school composting programs at three local schools (with more to come!): Natural Bridge Elementary School (NBES), Parry McCluer Middle School (PMMS), and Enderly Heights Elementary School (EHES).
At NBES Ginny has introduced two large “Earth Machine” composters to the school. These composters are electric and feature a constant aeration function that allows the decomposing food inside to remain near an ideal temperature of 140°F and, as a result, break down into ready-to-use compost after only about two months. NBES students collect their food scraps from lunchtime to put into these composters with the help of the school custodians, who record food scrap data just like you do, and ensure the composters maintain a good balance of greens and browns. These students plan to use the compost in their school garden to help grow vegetables for a school food pantry. From the data collected at NBES so far we know that this school produces about 300 lbs of food waste per week, so they could potentially keep 5 tons of food waste out of the landfill each year!
At PMMS teacher Angie Patterson, who herself has participated in the Backyard Compost Challenge and has now encouraged her family members to do the same, created a Garden Ecology course where composting plays a role. In her class, students learn how to tackle food waste in their own lives and at their school. In a unit taught by Boxerwood educators, students complete a cafeteria food waste audit, which involves sorting and weighing uneaten food from lunch and interviewing their peers to figure out why those foods are going to waste. (Pictured above.) Based on their findings, the students propose waste reduction recommendations to school leaders. So far this has resulted in setting up four tumbling composters in the school courtyard, adding a food waste collecting bin in the cafeteria, and installing a suggestion box so students have an opportunity to communicate with the people who prepare lunch. Students themselves take each day’s compost to their outdoor tumblers.
Lastly, at EHES this winter, Boxerwood facilitated a club called The Waste Busters. The goal of this club was to set up lunch and snack time composting and install composters on the school grounds. Thanks to the committed members of The Waste Busters, now every day at the end of lunch students sort their scraps into buckets and student leaders record the weights of the buckets before emptying them into their new school composters. The composters include two tumblers and one “Earth Machine.” EHES students turn the tumblers and collect dead leaves to ensure a good balance of greens and browns. The Waste Busters even organized school-wide presentations on the importance of composting so every student knows why they are sorting their scraps instead of throwing them all away.
All of you, as participants in the Backyard Compost Challenge, are part of an extremely important and ever-growing movement in our community to make this little corner of the Earth as healthy, beautiful, and cared-for as possible. Isn’t it great to be part of something bigger than yourself?!
