Nathaniel Baer
Saeed Hakim
Matthew Chaet
Andrew Chavis
Transforming Trash
Opening
It’s your typical elementary school lunch room. The buzz of conversation, aimless
laughter, and mushing food fills the hall. But if you watch closely, everything is different.
A young boy empties his half eaten PB&J sandwich into a special bin. A little girl does
the same with her spaghetti. The trash goes it one bin, the food another. After
everyone’s gone to recess, another boy stops by the special bin and removes the bag.
He takes the bag with him outside, where the other children are out at recess, and
dumps it into a large wooden bin. Some other children join him; they are all a part of the
composting club. Together they remove something from the bottom of the big wooden
bin. It’s rich dark mulch. They spread the mulch around a patch of dirt with plants in it. In
the patch they are growing tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes. When the vegetables are
done growing, the children will eat them together. One man’s trash has become these
children’s dinner. For most schools in the nation, this scenario is a fiction. “It’s dirty!”
Some parents would cry. “It’s expensive!” Some administrators would shout. But it isn’t
and it’s not. It could be a practical and simple reality if people were willing to reject the
normal and embrace the new. Our world is changing, from the coal mines of West
Virginia, to the Alaskan oil field, to your dinner plate, change is coming. It is time we
started growing the next generation of mover and shakers with sustainability in mind,
and that is what we would like to do. We want to put a garden in every schoolyard, a
compost bin in every dining room, and an environmental sound education in every child.
Our program, Transforming Trash, takes a sensible approach to sustainability
education. Composting shows the full cycle of food development and lets children see
the results of their efforts firsthand. From food, to mulch, to food again, nothing is better
than getting to “eat” your own education.
Aims, Location, Site Justification and Organization
To gauge the viability of Transforming Trash, we will begin with a pilot program.
We will start with one or maybe two elementary schools in the Troy area. The limited
space in cities makes composting in urban environments much more difficult that rural
or suburban composting. Troy, being an Albany suburb, is a good place for us to start.
The program will begin by getting teachers, parents, and administrators on board with
the project. A Q&A session with parents will be important to make sure they understand
our aims. If we determine that we have public support we will move on with the project.
This will start with a school wide assembly, to explain to the students how to separate
their waste in the lunch room and where that waste goes. Students who are especially
interested can join the composting club to get more involved with the project. If there is
limited interest to participate, or the children are not able to do some of the more
advanced work, older students (such as from a local high school) could be brought in to
help them. Finally, all students will receive an education supplemented by a
sustainability based curriculum. Using the schools own composting bin as an example,
students will learn about the food cycle, the benefits of composting, how food is broken
down by worms, and more. By the time the program is complete, the students should be
fully adept at using the composter in their daily life. Hopefully they will bring these ideas
home and carry them with them into the future, to build a more sustainable world.
Potential For Scaling Up and Out
Compost consists of organic materials and is essentially helpful to the
environment. It has the power to significantly reduce the amount of food residue and
yard trimmings in the US solid waste cycle, affordably restore contaminated soils back
to normal and several other positive consequences that will ultimately benefit
surrounding ecosystems. Our project plan is to coordinate with local schools in Troy,
New York to develop a composting system that will teach kids about the importance of
environmental sustainability. The beauty about our project is that it’s easy to develop
which allows us to extend it into other areas. We can set up municipal composting in
other cities outside of Troy such as Albany and Syracuse. Composting could be very
beneficial in communities that have poor soil conditions; it’s also cheaper than other
methods of cleaning contaminated soil. Composting costs relatively nothing and it’s also
a great way to recycle organic kitchen wastes. Many communities have banned leaves
from landfills, which forces residents to find other methods of disposing of their leaves.
Composting is an excellent alternative, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
by growing healthy plants to make fresh oxygen.
Local communities have the ability to hold neighborhood discussions about
composting as well as informal information seminars held by garden experts. We will go
into local schools in Troy after consulting with teachers and parents to ensure that our
project is something they’re interesting in developing. We will teach kids how to recycle
their compostable foods including fruits and vegetables and also the difference between
what can be composted and what cannot be composted. The students can also
compost clean paper and cardboard rolls after finishing a roll of paper towels. By using
this Troy model, we can scale out to other cities and potentially go nationwide. The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has conducted research about the
environmental benefits of composting, “The composting process has been shown to
absorb odors and treat semivolatile and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including
heating fuels, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and explosives. It has also been
shown to bind heavy metals and prevent them from migrating to water resources or
being absorbed by plants. The compost process degrades and, in some cases,
completely eliminates wood preservatives, pesticides, and both chlorinated and
nonchlorinated hydrocarbons in contaminated soils.” If everyone participates in the
composting process, then we will be able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,
remediate countless amounts of tainted soil and ultimately teach people about the
importance of environmental sustainability.
Related Projects and Involved Organizations
One project similar to ours is ICAW (International Compost Awareness Week),
an event hosted by the US Composting Council to promote composting both locally and
in large-scale commercial composting facilities. ICAW’s main goal is to teach people
about composting as well as spread awareness. Knowledge is power and the more
people that are environmentally responsible the better. ICAW serves as a method of
increasing awareness and priority to divert organic waste into composting. Areas that
don’t have banned materials in community landfills may continue to throw their waste
that could be composted into garbage cans which is less sustainable than naturally
recycling their products.
Another project similar to ours is CAV Composting Association of Vermont), an
organization committed to advocating organic recycling to benefit and protect the
environment. CAV believes that composting is the future to living in a sustainable world.
The connection between use and production of composting is essential to achieving this
goal of environmental sustainability. Water pollution comes from the drainage of
fertilizers and pesticides. Poor soil conditions exist because of a lack of organic matter.
Organic matter is ultimately the way to determine if soil is healthy or not. Soil that
contains a reasonable amount of organic matter lives a healthy life and in most cases
reduces water pollution. CAV’s connection between healthy soil and clean water
recommends that composters have about 5% to 10% organic matter in their soils. By
adding compost to their gardens and yards, they will create better soil conditions, which
will effectively amend the state of current soils. CAV also offers a workshop called
Worms in School for students from preschool to 8th grade. The workshop teaches kids
how to compost with worms, otherwise known as vermiculture based learning. The
program consists of setting up composting bins, nurturing the worms, and harvesting of
the worms as well as vermicast (composted material). During the year, students will see
how organic matter revitalizes the soil.
There are several ongoing composting projects in almost all parts of the US. In
the northeastern region, both New Hampshire and Connecticut administer school
composting guides, while Massachusetts and Maine set up composting workshops. The
region containing New York and New Jersey has begun composting to increase solid
waste reduction. New York focuses mainly on organic waste while New Jersey deals
primarily with yard waste. The region containing Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota has
completely banned tree and yard wastes from landfills. These have exclusive
information that they provide to home composters. The US Composting Council, Rhode
Island Resource Recovery Corporation, Northeast Recycling Council, North East
Biosolids, Waste Management Division, Composting Association of Vermont (CAV) and
several other organizations are all involved in recycling projects including composting
projects.
Rationale
Composting is a practice that has existed since the start of agriculture. It was a
practice that was very huge before the start of modern fertilization. Modern fertilization
consists of putting excessive amounts of nitrogen into the soil, but what excess nitrogen
does is that it kills plants that are slow to absorb it and allows plants that are fast to
absorb it to thrive (1). The problem with this is that it helps raise the chosen produce in
a farm very well, but any run off of fertilization has been seen to destroy marine
ecosystems because of excess growth of algae that absorbs most the oxygen in the
water leaving other species to die (2). Recently we have seen many marine ecosystems
being wiped out in bodies of water such as the Gulf of Mexico because of fertilizer run
offs from inland farms (2).
Over the years, as world hunger increased and so did the price of food, people
started to realize that they were being very wasteful with the food that they had, so they
first proposed the idea to feed leftover food back to the animals that had a part in
producing it, but this was not very effective. The idea of feeding the food back to farm
animals was a failure mainly because there was only one farm animal that could be fed
garbage, and that was the common farm pig (3). This idea seemed brilliant; why not
give our trash to farmers, who then would feed it to their pigs, which then would feed
us? Well there were a few problems. One, trash piles consisting of food only trash
leaves a lot of room for error and contamination. In some cases pigs have died because
of swallowing metal or plastic forks, knifes, spoons, and almost all kitchen utensils
imaginable that were accidently thrown in the organics (3). The second problem came
from sharp animal bones; pigs were simply swallowing bones that were sharp, which
would then lead to internal bleeding and ultimately death. Even organics led to the injury
of these animals, which meant that farmers didn’t want to invest. Lastly, videos were
being released where maggots were coming out of pieces of meat purchased from
grocery stores, the mental image of eating trash fed pork just didn’t settle well for people
(4). So, what was left to do with organic trash? Well most people in the U.S today just
throw their organic trash in regular trash, which then goes to giant landfills.
There are more problems with feeding organics to landfills than to pigs. Just the
idea of landfills is just as bad as eating trash fed pork, massive amounts of trash being
thrown in big acres of land, dirtying American soil and causing massive amounts of
pollution and smell. Not to mention that water runoff from landfills are far worse for the
environment than water runoff from modernly fertilized farms (5). Landfills are also
carbon emitting due to the methane that is released from biodegrading organics (5).
With all the problems that exist with our waste management system in this day
and age, it is only plausible to invest the little time and effort needed to create compost
from bio-degradable organic trash, which consists of almost a third of all trash being
produced. We believe that investing in compost can be very successful and it should be
prioritized now because of all the problems being created with the current systems of
removing organic waste and our need for better fertilizers.
1. "Pacific Southwest." Global Assessment of Nitrogen Deposition Effects on Terrestrial Plant
Diversity: A Synthesis. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/37053>.
2. "Fertilizer Run off into the Gulf of Mexico." Fertilizer Run off into the Gulf of Mexico. N.p., n.d.
Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://www.truthalliance.net/Archive/Images/tabid/62/galleryType/SlideShow/ItemID/265/Ta
gID/521/Default.aspx>.
3. Westendorf, M. L. "Feeding Food Waste to Swine." EDIS. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
<http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/an143>.
Project Design and context.
We will get a group of organized volunteers who know what needs to be done in
order to get compost in each of the schools in the Troy area. We will need a speaker
who is good with children and teens so they can convince them to help out, a person
with experience in compost so we can convince the school and the parents that we
know what we are doing, a treasurer because we will need someone who is good with
money and finally we will need a friendly face that people can relate to and help the
project get off the ground. Fortunately we have 4 people in our group who fit those
descriptions perfectly. Sense we already have those people we can start talking to the
superintendent of the schools which is phase 1. This is the most important phase
because if we do not get permission from the schools then we cannot get this project off
the ground. We need to convince the schools that this is a cost effective way to get rid
of food waste while helping the environment and helping the kids to learn about good
environmental habits. Another key phase will be getting the kids on board. If we do not
have their help then the whole plan fails. They are the key to success and we need to
convince them to help. It should not be too hard if we give them a good enough
incentive and show them how easy it is to throw out their food in a separate bin. To
secure funding for this project we may ask for donations from larger environmental
corporations or organizations such as stopwaste.org, or we could promise compost to
grow things in return for initial funding. The location that we chose, which is Troy, will
affect our development in a positive way because Troy Is a community full of
intelligence due to RPI being right on campus. It might be hard to convince the people
at first to switch to composting but they are intelligent and will realize that composting is
a good idea and it is cost effective if we educate them and show them the truth about
composting. Showing them that Composting can actually save them money will be good
because school, especially around troy, are in desperate need of money and resources
and composting will solve both of those issues. Some key stakeholders in this situation
are the elementary school kids, the middle school kids in the future, teachers at both
schools, parents of the students, people in the surrounding area, volunteers, residents
of Troy, students who attend RPI, the mayor of Troy, and future generations who will
continue our project. During the phases of our project we want to involve all of these
stakeholders, and maybe even more, to support our cause and to help us along the
way. The most important stakeholders that will contribute to the success of this project
are the students, the teachers, and the parents. Without them then this project will not
sustain itself and will fail. We need to talk to each of them and ask for their help to allow
us to come into their schools and explain what we need to do to help make this world a
greener place. This project has a big chance to succeed but there are a few political and
economic barriers that could put this on hold. If people in Troy don’t seem to like the
idea then the mayor might not want to allow us to even talk to the schools and
implement this all over Troy. Also another thing that may stop us is the disapproval of
the superintendent. He might not agree with our proposal at first but with a little
persuasion and education then we can convince him otherwise. Another issue is if the
composting idea is not as profitable as we hope it to be then a lot of people will not
agree with the idea because they need money to convince them. These are just some
of the problems that we face, but with perseverance we can get through anything. The
barrier that could stall this project the most is if the children and teenagers of Troy do
not seem interested in helping out. Without them the project cannot hope to remain
sustainable. However if everything goes as we hope it to then the children should be on
board and the project should be sustainable for many years to come. We will be
evaluating the success of the project every step of the way and if we see something is
wrong we will work to fix it as quickly as possible. At the end of the first 2 years the
project is going the way that we want it too then it will be a success in our minds. This
project has the potential to be a great success and could teach kids and future
generation about the environment and what we can do to make it a greener place. The
future is what sustainability is all about so the best way to ensure sustainability is to
teach the people who will shape it.
Closer
In the event that all Troy schools switch to composting bio-degradable organics,
the knowledge of the students about the circular process of food creation would expand,
and the carbon foot print of those schools would lower. Students would eat their lunch
like they do every day, but this time when they go to throw away their garbage, there is
one bin for organics with a sheet taped to it that is a guide to what is biodegradable and
what is not. Not only does this teach kids about what is organic and what is not, but it
also makes the child understand about their responsibility and their potential impact on
this earth. After the day ends, the bin is taken out of the school, and just like any trash, it
is thrown into a bigger container. This container is filled with all kinds of bio-degradable
organics ranging from napkins to yesterday’s meatloaf. With the use of worms the
degrading process is made more rapid and the smell of the trash is removed. As more
and more organic trash is added to the bin, the trash that is at the bottom is slowly
becoming compost, as more pressure from the top pushes down on the trash at the
bottom, the concentration of the organic trash is increased the time that it takes for the
trash to biodegrade is reduced.
After this simple process has been followed for about a few months, there is
compost at the bottom of the big containers of trash. This compost can then be taken
and used for the landscaping of the school. It can be used for its sports fields, its front
lawn, or as we suggest, it can be used to create gardens in the school. These gardens
can be grown by the students and run by the students. This can only expand the
knowledge of the students. I myself grew up learning how to grow a garden because my
surroundings allowed for it, but some kids don’t get these opportunities, and a hands-on
approach at education is just as important as learning behind a desk.