NHA Composters Get To Work Saving Food Scraps — & The Planet

11 New Haven Academy (NHA) students have helped to divert 3,285 pounds of food scraps from landfills so far this school year. 

They’ve done it with the help of their peers at the 444 Orange St. high school. Learning about what exactly composting is and why it matters, they have filled up dozens of food scrap bins during lunch periods. 

Student leaders shared that news during a sit down with the Independent.

NHA is one of four New Haven public schools piloting compost projects. The district pilot began this September and will continue until June 2025. The goal is eventually to implement composting districtwide. The other pilots are at John Martinez, Barnard, and High School in the Community.

At NHA, second-year American Sign Language teacher Kim Braun facilitates the Youth Taking Initiative Club, which for the past two years has taken on an annual service project to improve the school. Last school year the team began its work with composting. It initially partnered with local nonprofit Peels & Wheels. When added to the district’s compost pilot, it switched to partnering with the family-owned compost business Blue Earth Compost, which NHPS is using for its pilot at all four schools. 

NHA’s Youth Taking Initiative club has grown from five students last year to 11 this year.

For the past three months the team has collected at least 100 pounds of scraps each week. Some weeks they’ve gathered more than 200 pounds. 

The club cycles through filling up six toters with compost throughout the week, then takes them to the school’s back lot to be picked up weekly by Blue Earth. During each of the three daily lunch waves, two toters are placed on each side of the lunch room for students to dispose of their food scraps and compostable food trays. 

On Friday the schools compost was picked up at 7 a.m. The team did not collect any more compost that day, in order to avoid leaving the scraps on campus over the weekend. 

So far much of the compost comes from food service staff, who place the leftover foods after lunch into the compost bins. When student leaders’ schedules allow, they visit lunch waves to offer reminders to students to put food scraps in the bins while rolling them around the cafeteria. 

Last year, junior Akira Torres traveled to Nashville to present at a national youth leadership conference about the school’s compost work.

Sophomores Juliette Bolanos, Torres, and junior Zuhal Jamal have been a part of the Youth Taking Initiative club since its start last year. That was the first time Torres and Jamal learned about composting; Bolanos said her family composts at home but she didn’t typically get involved. 

They have all gained more confidence with promoting composting to their peers by providing them with data about the impact of food waste. In the process they grew more comfortable approaching students they don’t know. 

Last year, the team made a Family Feud-style game-show video for the school where they tested students’ and staff’s knowledge about composting and food waste. (Click here to watch.)

Now a year in, the students said, they see their peers stacking their compostable trays with food scraps on their lunch tables to remind themselves to drop them in the compost bin. They see their work as part of a larger green mission.

“It feels like we are the generation of, ​‘Here are the cards you’re dealt with’ ” Torres said. ​“But I really don’t want to sit back and watch things go downhill.”

Michelle Martinelli, energy & sustainability manager for the school district, told the trio Friday that ​“it is my goal to keep this going. Your success is going to help prove why this is important.” 

Martinelli estimated that a two-year plan of districtwide composting would cost $700,000 with partners Blue Earth to pick up the compost and Trifecta Ecosystems, Inc. to provide the education. 

Braun added that district-wide implementation is expected to be gradual. As a society, she noted, ​“for years it has been a convenience to just throw things out.” The largest task besides funding, Braun and Martinelli agreed, will be educating school communities to create composting habits.

The students concluded that it should not be assumed that youth do not want to do the work. ​“Education is a big part because how are we going to do something we don’t know anything about,” Jamal said. 

This school year the club will continue with composting while also taking on a new service project: providing menstrual products in all school bathrooms. They received another $500 service project grant to start this work this year. 

The group purchased small tote bags to place in bathroom stalls on each floor refilled each week with menstrual products. They have worked well so far, Braun said, and look better than metal dispensers. Click here to read about what the district plans to do to tackle menstrual equity, too.