Local Schools Work With University of Arizona on Compost Program

Prince Elementary and Amphitheater Middle schools in Tucson, AZ, have partnered with the University of Arizona and the city of Tucson to compost scraps from student lunches, reducing the amount of trash generated during lunch by about a hundred bags, reports the Arizona Daily Star. The program, which kicked off in early September, has students line up after the lunch period and take their scraps to a central collecting point where parent volunteers and other school staff help them separate the trash into three bins: paper, styrofoam and food. The food scraps are stored in bins on campus, picked up twice monthly by the city and taken to a composting site operated by UA. The compost is then either sold or donated to community gardens.