Composting program reduces waste and saves money.

Composting program reduces waste and saves money. PROBLEM Sometimes you don't know you have a problem until someoneshows how you could do something better. That was the case with wastemanagement in the Bellingham (Wash.) School District's food serviceoperation. Students in the district did what many students do when theyare finished with their lunch--throw everything still on their traysinto the garbage. But when a representative from the district'swaste hauling company showed the food service manager that a composting For the product of composting see compost Composting is the controlled aerobic decomposition of biodegradable organic matter, producing compost. program could drastically reduce the amount of garbage produced in thecafeterias, and at a reduced cost, the manager realized that thedistrict's current garbage collection A software routine that searches memory for areas of inactive data and instructions in order to reclaim that space for the general memory pool (the heap). Operating systems may or may not provide this feature. system was inadequate. SOLUTION Rodd Pemble, recycling manager of Sanitary sanitary/san��i��tary/ (san��i-tar?e) promoting or pertaining to health. san��i��tar��yadj.1. Of or relating to health.2. Service Company (SSC SSC Secondary School CertificateSSC Standard Systems Center (USAF)SSC State Services Commission (New Zealand)SSC Swedish Space CorporationSSC Salem State College (Massachusetts)) inWhatcom County, Wash., wanted to try a composting program in schoolswhose waste collection was already handled by SSC. He approached BrettGreenwood, food service manager of the Bellingham district at the time,who was immediately interested. Greenwood then sold the idea of a pilotprogram to administrators and principals. The district would save moneythrough composting because of the lower rate for hauling compost--$12per cubic yard versus $15 for garbage. But Greenwood and Pemble knew that they would have to win overcustodians For more meanings of this word. Please see Custodian.The Custodians is terminology in the Bah��'�� Faith, which refers to nine Hands of the Cause assigned specifically to work at the Bah��'�� World Centre in attendance to the Guardian of the Faith. . They held a meeting for all the custodians in the districtto explain their composting plan. The key to this meeting, says Pemble,was asking for volunteers to participate in the pilot program. Byvolunteering, the custodians themselves decided in which schools thepilot program would take place. Custodians who were unsure about theprogram were not forced to participate. "By starting withindividuals who wanted to do the program, we were almost guaranteed tohave success," explains Pemble. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] After the pilot program proved successful, composting was expandedto other elementary schools. By the end of the 2006-2007 school year, 12out of 13 elementary schools were composting. The next year, composting was introduced to the district'sfour middle schools, and then to its three high schools in 2008-2009.This system of rollouts meant that in each middle and high school therewas one grade of students who had done composting at their previousschool. This was important, says Mark Dalton Mark Dalton may refer to: Mark Dalton (basketball) - Australian basketball player and coach Mark Dalton (porn star) - American pornographic actor , the district'scurrent food service manager, because "older students are thehardest to train." Benefits All Around From 2006, when the pilot program began, through the 2008-2009school year, the district diverted over 800,000 pounds from the wastestream, resulting in a net savings of $53,000. Even with the extra thedistrict spends now that it uses paper products instead of Styrofoam, itstill comes out ahead. But the benefits are more than financial. Students learn about thescience of composting and about being responsible consumers. Thecommunity devotes less space to landfills. And the individual schoolsbenefit from the compost compost,substance composed mainly of partly decayed organic material that is applied to fertilize the soil and to increase its humus content; it is often used in vegetable farming, home gardens, flower beds, lawns, and greenhouses. itself, which the district buys back forlandscaping. From Garbage to Compost The first step the Bellingham district took was to eliminate asmany noncompostable materials as possible. To a large degree, this meantusing paper instead of Styrofoam. It also meant switching from flattrays to slotted trays in elementary schools. The next step was educating students about composting and trainingthem to toss their refuse into separate containers. Custodians were keyin this effort, and many of them spent the initial weeks of the programstanding by the containers and instructing students on what should betossed where. In some of the elementary schools, students in afifth-grade mentoring program coached their younger peers on how toseparate their lunchroom waste. Don Parker-Burgard is associate editor.