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Meghan Baker, Emma Schultz, Amy Umanzor, Erin Culfogienis
Our Senior Capstone Project is adding a compost system to the campus of Elizabeth Seton High School by creating a compost bin and reorganizing the trash cans in the cafeteria.
How would you describe the mission of this project to a friend?
How would you describe the mission of this project to a friend?
As our group observed all the trash that gathered in the cafeteria throughout the day, and we noticed much of it could be either recycled or composted. We all wanted to create a project that would care for the environment around our school, and we decided the best way to do that was to figure out a way to decrease the impact of pollution in our local community. Adding a compost system to the school would not only reduce food waste, but it would benefit our community by providing nutrient rich soil for gardens and reduce the air pollution landfills are releasing. The system would also educate Seton students on the importantce of good environmental habits that they can carry with them and implement throughout their lives.
What brings your team together toward a common goal?
What brings your team together toward a common goal?
We want to build an environment that is clean and healthy so later classes of Seton can enjoy being outside in nature.
Our group! From left to right: Erin, Emma, Meghan, Amy
Meet the team
Meet the team
Hi! We are Meghan, Emma, Amy, and Erin! We are seniors in the Leaders in Engineering and Design (LEAD) program and this is our senior capstone project. The four of us have been proud members of the LEAD program since freshman year. Individually, we have worked on many projects spanning various concepts, including coding, robotics, fire protection, and more. This is our first time working together as a group, but with all of our skills combined, we work effortlessly together. We can bounce ideas off of each other and collaborate on plans and building. Our different approaches hvae allowed us to find the best way to complete this project together.
Meghan!
She is heading to University of Maryland in the fall to study nutrition!
Emma!
She is heading to Smith College in the fall to study Physics and swim!
Amy!
She is heading to University of Maryland Baltimore County in the fall to study Psychology!
Erin!
She is heading to University of Vermont in the fall to study History and Gender Studies!
Ideation
Ideation
When we first started brainstorming this project in the beginning of September, we wanted this project to go in a totally different direction. We still wanted to do something to help the environment in our community, but we didn't immediately think of compost. Erin came up with the idea of installing a green roof on top of the school. The roof gets a ton of sunlight and and green roofs are fantastic at collecting and reusing water and creating fresh air. But with the amount of permissions that we would need from the school board to build somehting of that caliber, we were't sure if it would be approved.
One of the teachers, along with our school's Green Teem, recommended that we add compost containers to the bins in the cafeteria. It went along wiht our original idea of wnating to help the environment in our community, as the goal of adding compost bins was to limit the amound food waste produced at Seton. This ended up being the idea that we went with!
Project Management & Planning
Project Management & Planning
Timeline:
December: Submit the Proposal. Here, we did our initial research on how compost works and what foods can be put in. We brainstormed primary designs of the bins and along with researching the best and cheapest materials to use.
January: Finalize research and planning. In this step, we researched what type of compost bin we would replicate and the modifications that would improve it.
February: We finalized the design for the compost bin and came up with ideas for the trash can lid cut outs.
March: We found our materials online and placed an order. We also built a model of the compost bins.
April: After receiving our materials, we began to construct the bins. We also kept our journals and website updated.
May: We finished the compost bin. The trash can lids needed to be dropped from the project because of time constraints.
Materials:
Problem Statement
Excessive waste is being produced in the school, especially in the cafeteria due to the amount of students eating there as well as the lack of care or knowledge about recycling and composting. At Seton, trash and recycling cans in the cafeteria are not clearly labeled and separated. Additionally, there is no compost at Seton which would reduce the school's waste. The lack of recycling and compost is bad for the environment and the school community because decomposing waste produces harmful gases and contaminates local water and soil
Documentation
The first steps of our project were to draft ideas for our Senior Capstone. We wanted our capston to revolve around helping the environment. After experiementing with ideas on gardens and a green roof, we came up with a compost system. This system would have 2 parts - one is a trash organization system in the cafeteria, and the second is the compost bin outside. Below are our initial drawings of possible compost bin designs. Our final design looks similar to the right image in the bottom right. There will be three bins connected to each other with slanted planks of wood that are easily removable to mix and take out the compost.
My Movie 1.mp4After drawing out a desing in our notebooks, we transfered the plan to Tinkercad, which is an online design platform. Our design is modeled above.
The next step was to buy our supplies and create a prototype. We used scrap wood in the LEAD lab for the prototype while we waited for our supplies to come in. The prototype was extremely helpful to us, as it gave a visual to what we are trying to accomplish. It also allowed us to point out any problem spots before we build the real thing. Below are pictures of our group working on the prototype compost bin.
Here is our finished prototpye!
Here is our finished prototpye!
The prototype is made with with a scale 8:1. We used scrap wood and lots of hot glue. For the actualy bins, we will have sturdier wood and use screws to be more secure.
Once we received our supplies, we began by removing the leftover staples and nails from the wood. Our first batch of wood came from excess in the teacher parking lot shed. Our other supplies came from the purchase order. After that was done, we started to mark where we wanted to cut the wood to our desired length and started the long process of cutting the wood. The entirety of our compost bin will be made out of wood, so the cutting process will most likely take a couple classes to complete. But after all the wood is our desired length, all that's left will be to assemble the bin!
The cutting commences!! The drills were slightly scary to work with, but we all got the hang of it. Using the jig saw and mitre saw to cut most of the wood.
All the wood is cut and now the bin is being put together! Our group has been busy drilling and then screwing all of our different pieces together to create the outdoor compost bin. We hope that we'll only need a few more classes to complete the entire outdoor bin! As you might remember from the initial project statement, we had intended to also create indoor bin covers in which to collect the compost in the cafeteria, and when those got full we would transfer the compost to the larger outdoor bin to decompose. Due to time limitations, however, we have had to cut that part out of our project, and we will instead label one of the already existing bins in the cafeteria as compost to serve that purpose.
After building each individual plank with the four pieces attach, it was time to put them all together. We drilled holes into posts of wood to act as supports along with actually forming the box. All of the planks needed to be moved outside because the final bins would be to large to carry back and forth into the LEAD Lab. We ran into small problems because the screw marks and holes were not aligned propery. However after re-marking and re-drilling, everything was perfect. We also tested out the removable planks would look in the slabs. They were cut down by one foot to be more easily manageable. The next step is to stain the wood and place the bins in its proposed resting spot. Emma stained the wood on the second to last day of school and let it dry before placing the bins in their spot. The stain smelled horrendous!
After all the troubles and trials, our capstone finally finished. Below are images of the bins in their placement by the senior parking lot and behind the Mary Statue.
Project Presentation/Showcase
Project Presentation/Showcase
Click on the button above to see more pictures of the compost.
Our compost bins are proudly placed by the lower entrance and senior parking lot. Every morning, students will walk by it and can think about the small changes they can enact to take care of the environment. Although our compost is small, it teaches our community that caring for the environment is extremely important.
Reflection & Assessment
Reflection & Assessment
Overall, we are very proud of our finished product and happy with how it came out! One regret is that we did not start earlier, which made time a big constraint, but I think that we did very well with what we had. We learned/refreshed our skills using certain tools and had lots of fun along the way. We will be able to apply these skills that we used in this project later on in life, whether in our careers or simply in daily problem solving. We worked well together as a team and we hope that our finished product can make a big positive impact on Seton and the environment.
We completed the buildng of the compost very well, however, with more time, we would have loved to finish the plsatic coverings for the trashcan. These coverings would make the compost more accessible and better inform students about the compost.
Research
Research
First, we did research on what could go in compost and how certain food scraps can be composted but only at certain temperatures. We also did research about the maintenance of compost, what "brown" materials are necessary, how it needs to be kept at a certain temperature, and how the compost needs to be stirred in order to work. The EPA website was very useful in this research. We also discovered that there are compostable trash bags that would make the process easier, as well as compostable utensils, if the school wanted to further reduce waste. Additionally, we learned that the plates we use at Seton actually are compostable because they are cardboard and do not have a plastic finish on them.
After doing research on what compost is and how it works, we set about to find the best design. We mainly did this by finding different designs online and discussing what we feel would be the pros or cons of working with them. We also took into account the reviews of these specific designs, considering what has worked the best. Here are two of the designs that we considered but quickly decided would not be best for our purposes:
The first picture seems very sturdy however we worried about how upkeep would work, as it does not seem like the compost would be very accessible. Stirring the compost or accessing the finished compost seemed like it would be difficult with this design. The second picture shows a compost built with chicken wire. Many of the DIY compost bins that we found were made similarly and out of chicken wire. Although it seemed easy to replicate, the design did not seem very sturdy or durable. We wanted this compost bin to last and be efficient, so we decided to eliminate these two options. The two options that we narrowed it down to are shown below:
Both of these designs have a removable front, which we felt would be very efficient in our design. After building the design of each front on TinkerCad and discussing the possible pros and cons of each, we decided to use the slanted removable planks for the front. Our design pulled inspiration from both of these designs, incorporating the three separate bins that are connected but with the removable planks on the front. We also adjusted other aspects, including size and spacing of planks, as well as removing the chicken wire from the design. The second design was very useful in our design process because we were able to use many of the measurements as a basis for our own. From research, we also discovered that staining the wood was very necessary in order to ensure that it would endure the weather.
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