Elementary school takes composting to next level

Nationwide, an estimated average of 30 to 50 percent of lunchroom food is trashed—that is, not recycled or composted—according to data from the School Nutrition Association.

At Waters Elementary School in Chicago, a new sorting program has reduced that amount of waste to just 13 percent.

With the help of a grant from the Environmental Research and Education Foundation, Julie Moore, a parent, has been measuring trash. 

Moore has worked with the school nutrition team and Pete Leki, longtime director of the ecology program at Waters, to develop a system that amped up an already-impressive composting and recycling program. With the support of staff and custodians, this system puts the power to reduce food waste into students’ hands. 

Recycling and composting isn’t new at Waters, Leki says, referring to decades of doing more to reduce waste. But with the sorting program, which may become a pilot in other schools, waste reduction has reached new heights. 

“At first we had just a couple of 5-gallon buckets for composting and a bin that wasn’t really good,” Leki says. “Today, we’re in a different place. We have a 15-foot sorting line and a surface that’s clearly labeled.” 

After students eat lunch, they take their trays, donate anything unopened to a share table and dump out any liquid in a sink (liquid adds weight to the amount of garbage). Then they use the sorting system to recycle milk cartons, compost fruits and vegetables and put the rest in the regular trash.

It takes a bit of patience to help younger students get the hang of it, but sorting soon becomes second nature, Leki says. Parent volunteers in the lunchroom also help the line move along.

The trays themselves are compostable, part of a pilot program in which Waters and nine other schools in the district are testing the impact of such trays. 

The change to compostable trays added so much volume to the compost bin, the school made the move to commercial composting, which means some of the compost produced goes out into the community, and there’s plenty left for school gardens and landscape. 

About 500 trays are composted each day, and the impact has been big. 

An advantage to commercial composting is that big composting companies have the capacity to compost many more items—like meat, oil and bread—that are illegal for a smaller school composting operation to handle. 

Commercial composting has been going on for two years, and accounts for 48 percent of waste diversion at Waters. 

Leki advises school districts to negotiate fees with haulage and composting companies, leveraging the volume of compost coming from the school foodservice operation. The cost of hauling compost is leveraged with the lessened cost of hauling garbage. 

“They’re afraid it’ll attract vermin,” Leki explains. “Our compost system isn’t as intense as a commercial one. They’re constantly checking and turning in these gigantic mountain ranges. Those things get up to 160°F-plus consistently.” 

Leki is referring to the temperature required for compost to turn from garbage to black gold: a rich amendment to soil that also reduces the amount of trash going into landfills. 

At the school, big compost bins with just fruit and vegetable matter are maintained and turned with dried elements like straw, which helps to balance out the nitrogen and carbon. 

Science lessons like that are available to a select group of eighth graders who volunteer each year to care for the compost bins. It’s not a glamorous job—lots of slopping and chopping—but it’s a coveted position. 

“It’s like a miracle to me because they volunteer to do this and it’s not easy, especially when it gets cold outside or there are yellow jackets in the fall,” Leki says. “I explain to them why we’re doing it, and they mix it up, clean the buckets with a hose, return the tools to the shed and take the buckets back to the lunchroom. They do this every single day whether it’s freezing or snowing. They chip away the ice if they need to, and they do it with such good spirits.” 

In addition, each classroom has a recycling captain, a student in charge of collecting recycling items from each classroom and the school office, looking for ways to reduce waste. 

Leki has started doing workshops for other schools in the district, sharing his methods of getting students, faculty and staff on board with sustainability initiatives.