This fall the students began separating their lunch waste and using the new green bins. On one of those early October days, they had a lunchtime talk about what goes in each bin – green waste, recycling and garbage – and where the contents from each bin end up. We talked about landfills, recycling plants and compost heaps.
To demonstrate the compost, the kids collected some of their lunch scraps and put them into a plastic file box. The box contained numerous banana peels, orange peels, sandwich bits, a few apples cores, some paper napkins and paper plates, and one untouched apple. To all this we added a small amount of old, finished compost and five worms. The box was taped up and hung on the fence near the lunch tables for this kids to watch throughout the semester. Each week the level of stuff inside the box dropped, and last week on Friday we opened the box. The paper plates were gone, the fruit peels – gone, the napkins – gone, only the untouched apple remained, though much mushier. The worms had multiplied – we counted over 20, and the contents had become rich compost soil. And no smell – confirmed in a comparison with a fourth grade sneaker.
The finished compost was sprinkled in the Beach garden, ready to fertilized the growing vegetables – all in all a wonderful hands on learning experience. Now they see what happens to all that stuff they put in that big green bin, and why.
