Composting at CLC

The learners were given a challenge on their overnight to Coloma Outdoor Discovery School (CODS) to go back to their community and take action to help the environment. They chose reducing litter and composting. They came back to school to realize
that due to construction, the previous food waste composting program
that the school was working on through Allied Waste had for all intents
and purposes, had been "scrapped". The fourth grader decided to try to
rally interest and provide education around composting again. In their own
words:
C.H.: Why is it important to compost?
It is important to compost because
soil is the #1 thing that we lose every year and compost turns food
into soil. In an article Susan Lang says, "Around the world, soil is
being swept and washed away 10 to 40 times faster than it is being
replenished, destroying croplands around the size of Indiana every
year." You can make a compost bin at your house. You can't put meat or
dairy in it because animals can get in it. We can compost meat and
dairy here at school because our waste goes straight to Allied Waste
services to make compost. The upper graders had already brought
composting to our school, but then when the construction started, we
stopped using the compost bins.
A.K. and E.M.: Announcements
The fourth graders took on composting as a project. We had many different elements. One of them was to announce what we were doing. We announced in pairs right before
lunch to tell everyone about the composting. We did that for a week.
Our announcement basically reminded people to compost and gave tips
like to reduce waste by having a reusable lunchbox. The announcements
really helped.
C.V.: Composting Skits
The fourth graders at the SCCLC have been composting and wanted a fun way to show the younger kids at our school how to use the compost bins. We thought of different ways,
and in the end decided that we would make up skits. So we got into
groups and started making skits, one for each of the three K/1
classrooms. We practiced and tried toincorporate fun into our skits. Two of the groups had superheroes in their skits. We used props like trash cans and biodegradable bags
that we would use for the K/1 bins. We hope that after our skits the
K/1s will know and understand composting better. The more people that
compost, the more quickly the effects will show.
A.F. and C.H.: Monitoring
During lunch we have monitors standing by the compost bins and helping people decide where to put their food scraps. Before we did this, the trash cans were always full and the compost bins only had one or two things in them. Now the trash cans barely have anything in them and the compost bins are full! There is a huge difference and we are really helping the environment. We are also trying to reduce waste by reusing plastic bags. We are planning on doing this the rest of the year.
Our next step is to lower the food waste because we are lucky we have this
much food. Kids all over the world need food, and it's wasteful to get
rid of it. Now we are going to give away extra food to ourafterschool
program instead of composting it or throwing it away, so they can have
some snacks.


It was great to see the learners noticing all the
interconnections between their choices and environmental impact, both
good and bad. Many have concluded through this process that composting is a
wonderful way to help the earth, but waste and consumption are really part of a
larger complex problem. They continue to meet at least once a week to
check in with the progress and think about ways to continue to help the
environment and continue a successful program at school. To show
reducing waste in action, Marty, our beloved lower grade PE teacher,
gave a demonstration of his wastefuel powered car. He described the difference between using "regular" gas, biofuel, and wastefuel. He explained the rising food costs in relation to the increased demand of biofuels among other environmental topics.
Learners filtered oil from the local, popular Coyote Cafe, and poured this fuel into Marty's modified gas tank. They were amazed to see the leftover oil from frying tortilla chips being filtered and used to power his car.

It has been a wonderful experience seeing the learners really thinking about environmental issues and exploring ways they can make a difference. I believe this group will continue to work on and tackle these issues once they leave our
classroom and head to the "upper grades" and, hopefully, beyond.