Maya McFadden photo
Lila Kleppner: Not going to eat that? Into the compost it goes!
When Wilbur Cross High School senior Lila Kleppner saw a classmate walking toward the cafeteria trash bin, she leapt into action — with a five-gallon bucket in hand, intent on diverting that student’s food scraps from a landfill-bound pile to a community compost heap instead.
That was the scene in the cafeteria at the city’s largest high school this past Friday as the Wilbur Cross Environmental Club set out to collect pounds of discarded food scraps from students’ lunch trays.
Last week marked the third week since the East Rock public high school’s environmental club launched its composting pilot. The small-scale pilot concluded on Monday as the district’s school year comes to an end next week.
Maya McFadden Photo
As the environmental club students have done once for each of the past three weeks, on Friday, they worked to collect food scraps during the school day’s three lunch waves.
During each lunch wave, Kleppner, who is also an intern with the New Haven Climate Movement’s Youth Climate Action Team, was joined by some of her club peers as they canvassed the lunchroom with two five-gallon buckets collecting students’ discarded food.
Next year the students hope to secure more collection bins. Kleppner added that due to the school’s issues with rodents, the club only collects once a week to avoid having to store too much food waste that is collected by their project partner — the pedal-powered community composting program Peels & Wheels — at the end of each week.
When proposing the idea, the students met with the school’s facilities team to explain the process and agreed that if the program increased the school’s rodent problems, it would have to be reconsidered.
While making rounds of the school on Friday, Principal Matt Brown expressed excitement about the composting pilot and said the goal is to first establish a “small but successful” composting program for the school before expanding to something bigger.
In an email comment Brown added that the composting pilot has not caused any further issues with the schools rodent issues which is “showing people what is possible and giving clear insights and data to plan for what could be as we look to the future.”
"I'll Take That For You If You're Not Going To Eat It"
One lunch waves collection of food scraps.
Friday’s first lunch wave began around 10:40 a.m.
Students filed into the cafeteria. Most jumped into a food pick up-line on either side of the room.
Kleppner’s work began almost immediately as several students threw out their food as soon as they left the pick-up line.
To catch as much food waste as possible, Kleppner started each lunch wave by the exit doors, waiting on those students who came right out of line and threw away their trays of food.
“I’ll take that for you if you’re not going to eat it,” Kleppner said to students just before they tossed their untouched trays in the trash bin.
Club's impromptu food share table after first lunch wave.
On Friday the environmental club’s staff facilitator and English teacher Barbara Sasso also set up an impromptu food share table for students to drop off their unopened plastic-wrapped food items like yogurt, cookies, and chips.
Sasso also collected some students’ plastic and aluminum bottles and cans to deposit as a club.
Before...
...and after Kleppner gathers food scraps for composting.
Typically pizza is served on Friday, but, on the day this reporter watched the cafeteria composting crew in action, students received hot meatball sandwiches, chips, and fruit like apples, oranges, and bananas. Cold sandwiches were also served as alternatives.
Kleppner said a large portion of the collected food scraps consist of fruits which students are required to take with their meals.
“Just because kids have to take it but don’t want it doesn’t mean it should just be wasted,” she said.
Kleppner added that the goal is to show the district that even in a large high school like Cross, “it can be done.”
Peels & Wheels collects and processes the school’s compost and will deliver the final fertilizer to the school to use in its school garden beds.
To gain momentum and support around the club’s climate action work, it’s hosted rock painting events to decorate the school’s garden beds, hosted a found art competition, and had movie night screening of the move “Dark Waters” during the winter break to fundraise for the composting pilot.
Cross's current garden bed - ready for nutrient rich compost.
To also prepare for the pilot, the environmental club students took trips to visit Common Ground and New Haven Academy’s composting programs.
From Food To Dirt
Kleppner’s second shift began around 11:20 a.m for the school’s second lunch wave.
She took one side of the cafeteria while another member of the club canvassed the other half of the cafeteria.
At each table Kleppner arrived at, she gave a short and efficient pitch to her peers. “Hi, we’re composting any food you don’t want to turn it into dirt. It’s good for the environment,” she said.
One student handed her a banana.
“Are you sure you don’t want it? For later maybe?” Kleppner asked.
The student declined and the banana found a temporary home in Kleppner’s bucket.
For each fruit Kleppner collected she checked them for stickers.
Each lunch wave filled one compostable bag in the collection buckets.
Once filled the students put the full bags into a larger brown bin collecting the day’s worth of scraps.
Kleppner educates fellow student Napaul Bacote about composting along the way.
“Why are you putting meatballs in the bucket?” one student asked Kleppner as she spooned two uneaten meatballs into her bucket.
“All the food is compostable, just not the plastics and napkins,” Kleppner said.
“Can we take your banana peel to compost?” Kleppner asked a student.
The student agreed and tossed her banana peel into Kleppner’s bucket.
On the occasions Kleppner isn’t able to catch a student before they dump their food scraps into the trash can, she attempts to pick out as many scraps as possible from the top of the trash cans.
A food scrap free trash can thanks to Cross' environmental club.
After collecting scraps from another table, Kleppner was asked by student Napaul Bacote “What are you doing? Why are you doing that?”
Kleppner, who said the educational piece of the pilot is just as important as the action piece of their work, informed Bacote that the food scraps collected will be made into nutrient-rich dirt that will help grow plants at the school.
“Our garden needs nutrients for plants,” she added.
The schools garden is currently being used to grow beans and other foods that will be given to the school’s culinary department.
Time To Educate
Maskey, Sasso, and Kleppner.
During a break after the first lunch wave, Kleppner and fellow senior and member of the environmental club Sneha Maskey took the food share table items to Sasso’s classroom for her students to take or eat during class.
Maskey said she’s been taken aback when seeing how much food is being wasted during collection days.
“There’s people out there who don’t have that food,” she said.
She pushed for more education for students to learn about how to put unwanted food to good use.
“While some people know, some people don’t,” she said.
Kleppner agreed and said most students haven’t been exposed to composting and so the issue is not that they don’t care, it’s that they don’t know.
“It makes me angry seeing the lack of action from government. They just choose profit over people,” Kleppner said.
She added that she hopes pilots like Cross’s and ones happening by other student groups around the district will provide the district with evidence that policy change is needed around food waste and rescue services.
Brown added that the pilot, a first of its kind for Cross, is helping with “growing awareness of waste and its contribution to other environmental challenges like climate change. The Environmental Club, under the guidance of Ms. Sasso, is measuring the compost and making estimates of how much waste could be removed from the waste stream if Cross were able to implement a large scale project.”
The environmental club also created and put up two posters on each side of the cafeteria giving students reminders to “don’t forget to compost your food waste. Look for the bins.”
The club collected about 50 pounds of food scraps per week over the last three weeks.
As Kleppner canvassed the cafeteria she talked students through the process as she scrapped their uneaten yogurts and plastic-wrapped apples into the compost bin.
“I have to take the sticker off because it’s not compostable,” she said. “Neither is the plastic, so I’m taking the apples out the package.”
As she stopped at tables she asked the students first if they were done eating or not. “We want you to eat your lunch, that’s number one,” she said.
One student with a plastic-wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwich asked Kleppner, “How about this?”
“Yeah, sure, if you take it out the plastic,” she responded.
The student unwrapped the sandwich and tossed it into the compost bin.
In some instances students’ food was rescued by other students.
“Does anybody want this yogurt before I open it and put it in here?” Kleppner asked.
One student took the unopened snack off Kleppner’s hands and out of the trash or compost.
Maya McFadden file photo
While Maskey did her rounds, she reminded students at the start of each lunch wave to find her with the compost bucket once they finished their lunch if they had scraps.
During the third and final lunch wave around 12 p.m. Friday, a student stopped Kleppner yet again to ask what she was doing. “Are you doing community service?” he asked.
“I’m with the environmental club and we’re turning food scraps into dirt for the environment,” she said.
Once all three lunch waves were over, Kleppner and Maskey took a can full of the food scrap-filled bags to the side of the building and put them in a covered plastic bin for Peels & Wheels to collect later that day.
They added six full bags to their compost heap, then the duo headed off to take final exams.
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Our schools should lead the way in conservation and stopping food waste in the first place. Why is this important value not taught to ALL students from day 1? The schools can easily be centers of conservation and environmental awareness. It's a matter of will from downtown!!