Starting a Food Waste Composting System
Starting a composting system at my school

Last year I started the first food waste composting system for my school system and probably the first in the region (if there are others in the DMV region I would love to work with you and collaborate in some way). I had been composting at home for some years prior to this project and figured I could expand it to my place of work, an elementary school of about 400 students.
I didn’t know what to expect at first and went in with the goal of collecting 1,000 lb. of food waste during the school year. I thought this would be an achievable task since the school, from previous grants and garden projects, already had four composting bins. With those four bins (two rather large ones) I figured 1,000 lb. of food waste would compost pretty easy.
To warm the students up to the idea of food waste composting I talked about it in our classes together and had some demonstrations in the cafeteria during their lunch to show them what we would be accepting as compost. We limited it to fruit and vegetable scraps even though much more is acceptable for many other composting systems. We also added leaves in the fall, twigs throughout the year, and other plants from our garden as we discarded them.
I ended up only composting 381 lb. on the school year. The bins filled up faster than I expected and the food waste composted slower than I thought it would. I thought I would have been able to set out the compost bin in the cafeteria daily but was limited to once a week, if that. We dumped the food in the compost bins in an area far from student activity and sealed off from any animals looking for a snack.
It was messy business at times but the dark and rich soil we got from the compost was amazing. It was a great way to show the students a way to close a loop of consumerism and to show them that we could keep our waste localized at the school (not all of it though). We are looking forward to expanding in the future and working with local coffee shops for their coffee grounds. The 1,000 lb. mark is attainable and I am looking forward to hitting it in the future. Enriching our garden soils in a local manner was an amazing experience for my students and I. I hope some of these insights help you start your own food waste composting system.

