After many months of planning, research, discussing, and ordering, Eco Club is proud to announce our Worm Bins! As a club, we are dedicated to practicing and implementing sustainable systems and habits in our community. While brainstorming what we could do for our school, we came across the issue of food waste and its impact on the Earth.
Our school is bound to create food waste due to constant food consumption before school, in between classes, and during lunch. Food waste, despite common belief, is very harmful to our environment. Most food waste ends up in landfills where it begins to produce methane (a greenhouse gas), instead of decomposing and going back into the earth. In the U.S. alone, about 14.1 percent of methane emissions are from food waste sitting in landfills. This is incredibly heartbreaking, especially because turning food waste into nutrients for our plants and soil is so simple. So, that is exactly what we did.
Eco club unanimously decided that composting would be the best option. After substantial research, we narrowed our options down to two methods: hot composting or worms. At a first glance we thought that hot composting would be the easiest, most efficient way to tackle food waste, however after further research and consideration, our decision changed. After meeting with Aunty Bonnie at the Montessori on Opeleo Road and learning about their worm bin, we realized that upkeeping a worm bin was much simpler than we thought.
After we ordered the worm bin set, we collected buckets, learned how to care for our worms and finally, put it all together. We set up our worm bin, put out buckets to collect food waste, and introduced our new program to the school.
PHOTO BY ISABELLA RUSSO
Around campus you can find our labeled buckets for food waste.
Currently, there are four buckets around campus. You can find them in the middle school locker room, by the snack shop in the lower hall, under the big tent, and by the bleachers. In the future we hope to have more buckets in other popular lunch destinations such as the front porch or Freer Building. Students are encouraged to dispose of their food scraps into these labeled buckets throughout the day. When school lets out, an Eco Club member will collect these buckets and properly place the contents in the worm bins. This process also entails wetting paper shreds and placing them on top of the food scraps to maintain the moist environment for the worms, and speeding up the process of decomposition.
PHOTO CREDIT SOPHIA RUSSO
Eco Club member filling the worm bin
However, there are some limitations. Please refrain from putting any of the following into the buckets:
Meat
Dairy products
Citrus peels (tangerine peels, orange peels, lemons, etc.)
Trash
So far, this system has worked out almost seamlessly. We appreciate everyone who has appropriately used the buckets and supported Eco Club in our efforts to implement sustainable systems into our community. For worm bin updates, facts, and more, follow Eco Club on instagram at @ecoclub.parkerschool. Thank you!
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