One scrappy, student-powered school composting program: Quabbin RHS

A program alum and current participants ready to play
in the dirt.

Several years back, I went to an environmental conference and ended up at a session that had to do with community gardens and composting. One of the presenters, if memory serves, was from Vermont and spoke about composting food scraps from school lunches. 

This was around 2009, and I was still a newbie in the environmental world, so the idea of a such a program seemed -- to me, anyway -- very cool, but also exotic and, well, Vermont-y. (It is the Green Mountain State.) 

That was before the proposed 2014 ban on food waste for institutions producing more than a ton a week...yes, coming our way right here in Massachusetts. The recycling community is talking about this issue plenty, with many wondering if it will really happen, and others wondering how they can get ahead of the curve.

Earlier this week, I trekked out to Barre and got a look at a school composting program that's been running since even before I went to that long-ago conference and is thriving in a way that even a few Vermont schools might envy. Even better, it's run chiefly by the program's students.

Bin there...
Quabbin Regional High School's Composting and Organic Gardening Program came to life in 2008, with a "very generous" initial grant from Waste Management, according to program founder Karen DiFranza. That's when students and a parent teamed up to build a 12X12-foot bin with four separate chambers for various phases and materials needed for the composting process.

This set of bins -- protected from weather and would-be rodent invaders -- is where students taking part in the composting program bring cafeteria waste to empty and mix with the right share of carbons (leaves, mostly donated to the school by the local DPW following town property cleanups). Here's what the different compartments hold: 

Karen DiFranza shows off the centerpiece
of the composting operation.

 

 

• this year's pile of food scraps mixed with leaves, just beginning the process
• compost that's further along, but not yet optimally broken-down
• material ready to use in the garden and on school grounds
• leaves for mixing in.

Ready-to-go compost.

A key to the program's success, DiFranza observes, is having student volunteers monitor the collection of scraps at lunchtime. Typically, a pair of students staff a table near where students offload recyclables and trash, and remind students of what can and can't go into the 5-gallon compost collection buckets. 


(Self) Sustainable gardening
Some school programs draw the line at composting food scraps to keep them out of the waste stream. Quabbin's program takes the next big step and uses the compost to
nourish a student-farmed community garden. Produce from the garden, from baby carrots to cherry tomatoes to a variety of herbs, is used by the high school's food service, sold at the local farmer's market and donated to the Barre food bank. 

The 25 students in the program work on a range of tasks, both in the garden and out. Besides weeding vegetable and herb beds and turning compost, and monitoring the scrap collection, students also gain other kinds of experience, such as making organic value-added products like lip balms, salves and essential oils, harvesting seeds, and designing logos and packaging for their merchandise. These products -- along with numerous grants -- make the program self-sustaining (DiFranza points out that it receives no school funding).

One of the most rewarding parts of the program, she notes, is getting kids to realize that the choices they make are all a part of the earth's cycle. "It's a real teachable moment," she says.

Karen DiFranza shares her expertise at conferences and as a consultant. You can contact her via her Web site, Hands to Earth. Learn more about Quabbin's program at http://www.quabbincompostingandgardening.org/quabbinhome.html.