Every year, 133 billions pounds of food is thrown away in the US. This figure includes farms and businesses, but individual households make up 43% of total food waste and a typical American family “throws out $1,600 a year in produce.” The question is, how can we solve this problem?
There are a few answers to this question. There is a food recovery hierarchy that describes the ways to deal with excess food. First is source reduction, referring to creating and buying less food, so that there isn’t so much extra food. Next is food recovery, the process of taking food that would otherwise be wasted and giving it to people facing hunger. Some organizations, like Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle, TN, are using this approach to rescue vegetables like green beans that were deemed unfit for commercial retail to give to the hungry. Other answers include feeding animals to industrial uses, such as creating biofuel. And finally, the most topical solution: composting.
Composting Committee, the committee in charge of organizing composting efforts at DSST Byers, aims to “educate students on the positive effects composting can have on the environment,” announced its president, Andrea Cordova. These positive effects on the environment are varied, from lowering greenhouse gas emissions (food contributes to 11% of emissions) to stopping nitrogen pollution (which causes algae blooms and dead zones).
Composting committee currently has composting bins in the high school and hopes to expand the initiative to the middle school and other DSST schools. COVID has harmed the composting program in its launch, since students don’t fully understand what composting is, or that our school has a composting program. Since composting committee is so new, it is even challenging for the members of composting committee to figure out the logistics! Cordova relates the community effort that composting requires, explaining that “All of us are learning together and figuring out how to educate our school on how to compost.”
This rollout has started with Senior Academy, and will continue to expand into the other grades. The most important factors in composting committee’s success will depend on the students composting all of their leftover food. Another way to help is by volunteering. The composting bins need to be monitored during lunch to ensure that the correct foods are being composted. The plan is for these bins to be staffed by volunteers, like NHS or service committee members who need service hours. Of course, students who want to be very involved can also join composting committee to help with its rollout, occurring now.
Every Wednesday, the composting bins will be emptied by Denver’s composting program, who will take the compost to be processed and screened. Then it will be converted into soil to be used to plant gardens and grow vegetables. This soil will be used to help the urban gardening sub-committee.
As Andrea says, “Climate change is a huge problem in the world at the moment and a lot of people don’t know what initiatives to take.” Well, for those people, composting is part of the solution and a great place to start.