In the Eberwhite Elementary cafeteria, there are trash bins, recycling bins, and a small 5-gallon bucket lined with a biodegradable bag.
It’s the compost bucket where kids put their leftover apple cores, banana peels, orange rinds and other biodegradable food. Teacher Dave Corsa, who is a master composter and on the board of Project Grow, picks up the bag each day and stores it outside his classroom in a green bin. And once a week, Project Grow’s Joet Roema brings the bag to the Leslie Science Center.
The compost bag –– which itself is also biodegradable –– goes directly into a compost bin at Project Grow’s Compost Education Center at the science center. The CEC demonstrates hot and cold composting techniques.
Julie Agranoff, committee co-chair of the Eberwhite Green Team, organized the composting efforts at Eberwhite last year, and says she and other volunteers helped educate students at lunchtime. “We did a lot of dirty work, putting on gloves and reaching into the garbage, saying to the kids: Hey, this can be composted!” she said.
Now students seem to understand what can be composted and what cannot, said Corsa. “The kids learned a lot last year.”
Be the first to comment