Restore Soil - Composting

All science club members' responsibilities include being an active member of our conservation projects.  Students are assigned weekly duties throughout the year.  These include composting of school lunches, keeping the stream clean and remove the contaminants (forks and catsup packages are the biggest culprits), planting seeds for plant sale for Earth Day, and cultivating the composted soil to our sustainable community garden. In the 2015-16 season we have partnered with SMART Recycling US http://www.smartrecyclingus.com/ to collect and compost all our compostables.  It has been a dream come true.  They have provided all the rolling bins and collect twice a week.  

 

Composted materials include:

From Cafeteria-fruits, vegetable, breads, meats, cardboard milk containers, napkins, and all cheeses from students lunches

From Staff-Coffee Grinds and any fruits, vegetables, or bread from home or lunches

Brown items include shredded paper from machines in school and from staff donating from home, pencil shavings collected daily from school, and leaves collected during the fall.  

 

TimeLine

 August –Met with Science club sponsors and organized a schedule for students for the year.  Meet with Mentor.

 

September- Signed up science club students to schedule created in August, and Garden club members are chosen for collecting all pencil shavings from school- this is done daily throughout the year.

 

October - Ongoing maintenance of lunch lines, reminding students scheduled, and present school-wide PowerPoint’s with videos on what everyone can do to make a difference and our school conservation culture.

 

November- Ongoing maintenance of cafeteria trash lines and reminding students scheduled.

 

December - Ongoing maintenance of cafeteria trash lines and reminding students scheduled.

 

January - Ongoing maintenance of cafeteria trash lines and reminding students scheduled. Project posted on the website.

 

February - Ongoing maintenance of cafeteria trash lines and reminding students scheduled.

 

March-  Ongoing maintenance of cafeteria trash lines and reminding students scheduled and using compost for Earthday Planting and community gardens.

 

April- Ongoing maintenance of cafeteria trash lines and reminding students scheduled.  Meet with Mentor.

 

May- Ongoing maintenance of cafeteria trash lines and reminding student scheduled and leftover compost goes into school beautification activities (rose bushes, azaleas bushes, and shrubbery are re-nourished with composted soil) and sending rolling bins back to SMART.

 

Educational Components

 

The educational components begin with the lessons in Action for a Cleaner Tomorrow     workbook, “Can You Dig It” and “My Bag.” This is when we introduce how to compost, what to compost, and the benefits of composting. 


Action Components

 

All science club members' responsibilities include being an active member of our conservation projects.  Students are assigned weekly duties throughout the year.  These include composting of school lunches, turning and maintaining compost piles, planting seeds for plant sale for Earthday, and transporting the soil to our sustainable community garden.