Waste into soil: LaPorte school embraces composting

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

There's a lot of excitement at Cache La Poudre Middle School about being green. Green is one of the Pirate colors, of course, but it's also the name of a new club at the school, the Green Team.

The Green Team is helping to run the new composting program at the school, and the effort has already made a large impact. According to club advisor Bob Steketee, the school has reduced its landfill trash by one-third since school started this fall. The goal is to double the impact and reduce waste by two-thirds.

To expand the program even further, the school hopes to include CLP Elementary in composting at some point.

The program encountered a special set-up challenge at CLPMS: the danger of large, unwanted visitors. Because bears frequent the LaPorte area, especially in the fall before hibernation, the school had to build its outdoor waste bin enclosure with a covered top.

The enclosure has bins for trash, recycling and compost, and Steketee noted proudly that the trash bin is now the smallest.

Students on the Green Team have been doing their homework, and they have plenty to say about the benefits of recycling and composting.

"It can really help the earth," said Sophie Jones.

Claire Hayhow pointed out that if every person recycled and composted their waste, it would take care of three-fourths of waste in the landfill. About 50 percent of that material, she said, is food waste.

When turned into compost, Hayhow noted, the waste can help new plants to grow.

Green Team members like Karina Badger have learned that many surprising items can be composted, like tissues, napkins and even disposable silverware that's biodegradable. The guideline for the group is, "Anything that was once alive can be composted."

The school cafeteria has three bins for waste: one for composting, one for recycling and the third for trash. Green Team members help educate fellow students about what goes where.

Poudre School District's trash hauler, Gallegos Sanitation, began the composting program last year with just two schools. Alexis Joens, community outreach coordinator at Gallegos, said the company has always had "a really strong sense of community," and the project is one way to give back and promote environmental stewardship.

"We wanted to see this in the schools," said Joens, "because if you learn a good practice, you take it home. The students are teaching their parents to recycle and compost."

Gallegos also offers the composting service to local businesses, such as restaurants.

Middle school parents pushed to have CLPMS participate this year. The response has been "overwhelming," said Joens, all the way from Principal Skip Caddoo to staff, parents and students. Custodian Ricardo Rodriguez has been especially helpful in facilitating the new program.

Joens is pleased to see the enthusiastic reception at CLPMS, because she graduated from the school herself. So far this year, the school has collected an average of 340 pounds per week of compostable material. Gallegos provides each school with regular reports on the amount of waste diverted from the landfill.

This year, the composting program has grown to include six schools, and since school started this fall, they have diverted 19,362 pounds of waste from the landfill through composting. Besides CLPMS, participating schools are Polaris/Lab School, Eyestone Elementary and middle schools Wellington, Kinard and Lesher.

Gallegos is the hauler, but it's not the final destination for compostable waste. The company takes this waste to A-1 Organics in Platteville, which operates a hot composting facility.

Steketee grew up with a strong ethic of conservation himself, and he recently told his students how that came about. His parents grew up in The Netherlands during World War II, when the country was occupied by Germany and food was extremely scarce. They and others ate tulip bulbs and even pet animals to survive.

As a result, wasting food and other resources is not an option for Steketee.

According to Green Team member Taylor Naiman, "If you're throwing something away, you're not just putting it in a trash bin. You're throwing it in your land and your world." Without a change in behavior, she added, "The world will become one big landfill."

The LaPorte students, along with other schools in the composting program, are doing their best to make sure that doesn't happen.