Editor’s note: Alarmed by the amount of food wasted in the world, students at St. Mary’s School in Medford decided to take action. They wanted to figure out what they could do locally – and importantly then implement their solution. They conducted research, made field trips, and created a comprehensive solution that they shared with their fellow students as well as faculty and staff and which they have now put into action. The result is a new system to reduce food waste, compost leftovers, and donate scraps to a nearby pig farmer. Their work not only reduces climate warming pollution, it has also empowered the students to be changemakers. Congratulations, St. Mary’s! Here’s the story, written by St. Mary’s Junior Cyrus Luke Oliva, 17, an Ashland resident.
By Luke Oliva
In an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the community and gain awareness into the impact of food waste, the students of the Change Makers class of St. Mary’s School, led by teachers Kate Levin and Kevin Keating, aimed to encourage motivated students to look beyond identifying local problems to actually implement solutions to positively impact the world.
For the class pilot, our group investigated the problems that food waste poses across all facets of society, including environmental, economic, and social issues.
We found that 40% of all food produced is wasted globally, more than enough to feed the hungry. Additionally, the waste of thrown out food extends to the resources used in the production and transportation of goods, including water, oil, and packaging. Perhaps the most impactful discovery we found was food waste’s role in global warming and greenhouse gas emission. When thrown out, the majority of food ends up in landfills. These anaerobic (oxygen-lacking) environments disrupt normal decomposition and transform food scraps into methane, a greenhouse gas 25x more potent than CO2.
Both alarmed and inspired by these findings, the class began to investigate how food waste impacted our lives locally. We traveled to our regional landfill, where we discovered how complex the management system is and advancements into making waste disposal far more efficient and sustainable.
In order to truly understand how much food waste we as a school were creating and to find pressure points which could be used to inform solutions, the class conducted a food waste audit of St. Marys. We set up a station in our cafeteria, which consisted of buckets to sort food into different categories (protein, carbs, produce, etc) and attendees to collect survey answers on why students were throwing away food. Over 3 lunch periods, the class collected data on the amount of food wasted by the student body and kitchen. We found that around 50 pounds of food was wasted per lunch, and extrapolated to get a total of one ton wasted per month.
After collecting data, the class got to work brainstorming solutions. We developed a three pronged approach: a kitchen composting initiative, an education campaign, and scrap repurposing plan. To execute these solutions, we talked to various stakeholders across the community who could give us input and help us achieve our goals. These stakeholders included composting expert Magdalena Winter who runs Ashland Community Composting and is a member of the Ashland Climate Collaborative’s Compost Action Team, our school gardening club, local pig farmers, and the St. Mary’s food service staff. These discussions were extremely helpful and allowed us to develop polished proposals that were feasible for all.
Finally, the Change Makers class got to work executing our solutions by splitting into focused groups, each with a different aim. Some of us focused on the school education campaign; we brainstormed a portion-sizing system to encourage communication between food staff and students, and designed signs to remind the student body of their impact. We presented our findings and solutions to the entire school community in a presentation. Others among the class coordinated a plan for local farmers to repurpose extra food to feed their pigs. Furthermore, we finalized a pilot composting program, which involves student volunteers taking easily compostable food waste, such as coffee grounds and vegetable scraps, to the school garden where members of the Gardening Club will handle the mixing of wood ships and turning of the compost piles. This pilot will run for two weeks and hopefully be added as a full time program.
The class will continue to run next year and address other environmental issues in an effort to make both St. Mary’s School and the community as a whole more sustainable.