The city of Eugene has partnered with the School Garden Project of Lane County to build and implement five new school gardens and cafeteria composting programs in the 2011-2012 school year.
The city grant will provide funding for a full-time Americorps staff person to create the school gardens and implement the compost programs. Cafeteria composting reduces the amount of waste schools send to the landfill and provides valuable compost for each school’s garden.
“For a school with 400 students, they could compost approximately 600 pounds each month. Of course waste prevention is stressed over composting but even still that amounts to about 4,800 pounds per year,” said Anne Donahue, who is with the city’s Waste Prevention & Green Building Program. “While the overall pounds diverted is minimal, the lessons learned by composting at schools, feeding a school garden that compost, and feeding students healthy organic food from the school garden is what we are trying to achieve with this grant.”
According to city officials, when food waste is sent to the landfill to decompose anaerobically, it releases a potent greenhouse gas (methane) that is 21 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.
Donahue says that students also participate in the composting program:
“Yes, students voluntarily add food scraps to the bucket. Students volunteer to take the compost to the compost bin and dump it in. Students then cover the food scraps with sawdust or leaves. It is an easy to do “dump and cover” method. Once or twice a week parent volunteers (with their student/child typically) fluff up the compost a bit. Students help shovel school compost from the compost bin into the school garden. Students at this point get to see that plastic ‘sporks’ indeed never go away.”
17 local schools that compost cafeteria waste include:
- Adams Elementary
- Arts & Technology Academy
- Cal Young Middle School
- Camas Ridge Community School
- Cesar Chavez Elementary
- Charlemagne at Fox Hollow
- Clear Lake Elementary
- Edison Elementary
- Family School
- Guy Lee Elementary
- Irving Elementary
- Maple Elementary
- Riverfront School
- Spencer Butte Middle
- Shasta Middle School
- Springfield Middle School
- The Village School
For more information about the City of Eugene’s waste reduction efforts, contact: Anne Donahue, City of Eugene Compost and Urban Agriculture Coordinator, Anne.C.Donahue@ci.eugene.or.us, 541-682-5542.
For more information about the School Garden Project or the Cafeteria Compost workshop contact: Rachel Sanders, Garden Educator, gardeneducator.sgp@gmail.com, 541-284-1001.
Or you can download the “Cafeteria Composting In Schools: Strategies, Systems and Resources for Lane County Schools – The School Garden Project of Lane County” PDF file.
Photo Credit: City of Eugene
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