Northwood’s Green Club recently began a composting program, simultaneously aimed at partnering with agriscience classes and at reducing the food waste that is very common at the school.
“I go to lunch, and I see so many people wasting the fruit and veggies, because they may not taste the best,” club president and senior Sarah Montgomery said. “But they can go to good use.”
All of the collected food waste will be composted and then given to Mrs. Brickhouse’s agriscience classes to use as fertilizer for their plants. This will, ideally, prevent it from ending up in a landfill, as does 25-40% of all food grown in America.
When the compost bin was recently introduced, the club discovered that it was difficult to gain the cooperation of students.
“People specifically put trash in the compost bin,” club member and junior Graham Cleven said. “So our biggest challenge has been that people don’t care.”
The Green Club recently created a video aimed at addressing this problem. It is meant to inform students of the existence of a composting bin and convince them to use it. They plan to have the video shown in Plus 1 once students return from the winter break.
This is not the first project that the Green Club has considered or attempted, but they hope that it will be the first project that succeeds. Last year, they unsuccessfully endeavored to raise funds for buying a dishwasher, and they have also proposed other projects.
“I remember that we were talking about somehow getting the money we’d need to buy solar panels,” Montgomery said.
“We were also talking about getting a dishwasher instead of using Styrofoam trays [in the cafeteria],” club member and senior Rachel Montgomery said. “But we don’t have money for that.”
However, the Green Club has not entirely given up on making changes to the cafeteria’s use of Styrofoam.
“That’s still something we are thinking about doing,” Montgomery said. “The price difference is very small in Styrofoam plates to compostable plates.”
Cleven tersely summed up the difficulties that the club has had operating in an apathetic environment without the benefit of funding.
“I feel like if everybody just knew about the Green Club and just gave us money, we could do cool stuff,” Cleven said. “As it is, we had to spend four months finding money to buy a tarp.”
– By Colin Battis