Cafeteria Composting and Waste Management

Our goal for this project is to make the disposal of food waste and other waste clearer and easier to understand by creating updated signage for the cafeteria. We hope that enhancing our signage will lead to healthier compost and increase sustainability practices in our cafeteria. When composting, it is important that there’s very little contamination, so we hope our signs will help make the compost management process much more convenient and beneficial.

2020-21 Composting Infographic and Signage Adjustments

Our goal was to create infographics to effectively educate students about the composting system in place at MVRHS.
We toured Thimble farm to learn more about their composting system - where it goes and how it's used.
We have been working on our compost infographic.
We also reworked the compost signs for the cafeteria, and we split to signs to make the waste sorting more efficient.
The recycling in the cafeteria is on hold, due to lack of success in sorting waste.

Group(s): Leadership Class

Student Leader(s): Julia Sayre, Colleen Carroll

Facultly Mentor(s): Natalie Munn

Past Work

2019-20 Signage

Past Efforts:

We created new, big signs to replace the older signs. Mr. Baer from the Art Department has been helping us print them.
We painted the waste area to match other walls, printed the new signs, framed them, and put them on the wall in one of the waste collection areas.
We painted the pieces that frame the holes where the waste goes to match the color of the compost and landfill signs (green and black).
We started to work on signs and paint for the second waste area.
We also started work in creating a database of the amount of compost processed at our school, and perhaps the other island schools as well, to be hosted on the Big Data section of the MVRHS Science Resource website.

Group(s): Protect Your Environment Club, Leadership Classes

Student Leaders: Alison Custer, Ava Vought, Emily Gazzaniga

Faculty Mentors: Natalie Munn, Mercedes Ferreira, Suzie Brown (Island Grown Schools), Kevin Crowell, Chris Baer, Louis Hall

New Signs and Purple Wall Paint

Original Signs

Jan 2020 Waste Audit

On January 29, 2020 six students from the Protect Your Environment Club along with Louis Hall and Suzie Brown from Island Grown Schools went through cafeteria trash barrels to measure the waste from that day. This data will help us in the future to change any errors and reduce the amount of food waste being put in ‘landfill’ bins and landfill items being put in ‘compost’ bins. Improving this waste management process will make our compost much healthier for the local farm that is receiving it and will also add more sustainable practices to our school day, implementing the importance of being environmentally conscious.

There was a total of 169 pounds of waste.
108 pounds, 64% of the total waste was food waste (compostable).
57 pounds, 34% of the total waste was landfill.
4 pounds, 2% of the total waste was recyclable.
49 pounds of food waste (put in the landfill bins) were rescued and put in compost. Therefore, the error rate is 29%, meaning almost ⅓ of compostable food waste was mistakenly put in landfill.

Hopefully by knowing this information, we can use this data positively by reducing our error rate and making sure that the food waste is put into compost bins and doesn’t go to waste!

2018-19 Waste Audit

Throughout the 2018-2019 year the Leadership classes have worked with Kevin Crowell and with Suzie Brown from Island Grown Schools, as well as teaming up with PYE members to get help reduce the amount of plastic bottles used in the Cafeteria, and work on making a waste system including compost.

First Semester H Period Leadership and Suzie worked on a food waste project, measuring the amount of food that was thrown away.
- - H Period Leadership sorted and weighted 116.5 pounds of trash
  - 73 pounds were food scraps, which is 63% of total amount
  - 8 pounds were recyclable, which is 7% of total amount
  - 35.5 pounds was trash, which is 30% of total amount
Some of the vending machines were removed over the summer, which will reduce the amount of plastic water bottle sales.
The PYE club designed a GoFundMe page for fundraising money for a sparkling water dispenser.
Over the summer, compost, trash and recycle bins were set up for the Cafeteria.
Dishes and silverware were purchased to reduce the amount of plastic in other areas of the Cafeteria.

Group(s): Protect Your Environment Club, Leadership Classes

Student Leader(s): Emily Gazzaniga, Caroline Hurley, Emma Searle, Lauren Pagliccia

Faculty Mentor(s): Olsen Houghton, Natalie Munn, Louis Hall, Kevin Crowell, Suzie Brown (Island Grown Schools)

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