Cultivating Strength: Composting

In a past blog discussing our school-wide theme Strength, we stated that we “encourage our community to resolve to make the difficult decisions when there are quicker and easier alternatives available.” This notion is demonstrated in the collective work done through our composting program, led by Willows Middle School teacher Liz Stocksdale. Leading student, staff, and parent volunteers over the past year, our school established a strong foundation to reach initial goals of creating zero food waste and lowering total carbon emissions. These challenging objectives will continue to be targets to strive towards, but with Stocksdale and volunteers laying robust groundwork to begin the compost cycle over the past year, our school is taking the necessary steps to turn our long-term aspirations into near future achievements.

While it can be easy to view composting as just discarding food waste into a decomposing pile, the process needed to keep the compost sanitary is a bit more complicated. Each week, the contents of smaller compost bins placed around campus are collected, mixed, chopped, sifted, temperature checked, and then finally layered into the main bins. As a pilot school using the LifeCycler composting program, Stocksdale paid close attention to the early results of the compost, making sure to adapt and alter the recipe as needed. 

As Stocksdale will tell you, it was a lot easier said than done at the beginning, sharing “It was more intensive work than initially proposed; we had a lot of unknowns that we needed to work out before we could ask for the help of volunteers.” To make sure that the compost wouldn’t give off a rotting odor, they started off very conservatively, checking the temperature multiple times a week and using a recipe with a higher ratio of alfalfa and wood chips to compostable matter. However, as time went on, and the compost began to function as intended, they discovered they didn’t even need to use alfalfa to stimulate decomposition, and only needed to check its temperature once a week. The hard work in the beginning has begun to pay off, but there is still plenty more to be done.

“Closing the cycle of compost has remained the goal since the start” says Stocksdale, referring to a loop in which we use, compost, and transform a natural resource into a new product. However, there are still obstacles that have kept The Willows from closing the cycle. For example, figuring out the best system to collect excess food from lunches and snacks remains difficult. Initially, the composting team placed small food waste bins around campus, as students eat at different times and in different locations. But throughout the first year of composting, they found that some area’s bins needed to be changed more often than once a week, while others would barely get used.

To find solutions to this problem, and others, Stocksdale envisions the student community as a key source of assistance. “The goal for us is to make all of these processes so easy and so ingrained that (students) don’t even have to think; they’ll just know how to compost because the prior generation teaches them.” Getting kids excited about composting procedures will undoubtedly be a difficult task. And yet, envisioning a future where students inherently know the right way to compost requires finding answers to current problems. But The Willows is ready and prepared to do the hard work to find the answers, making a more sustainable and renewable community in the process.

Learn more about The Willows programs HERE.