Originally appears in the Winter 2015 issue

EVERYBODY EATS. No matter who we are, where we live, or what we do, food will always be required to keep us alive. At school, the way in which students eat has the ability to teach many lessons. School bell enforced throwaway lunches commonly promote an unsustainable and disconnected experience of food systems. However, mealtime can be a gateway to understanding our dependence on plants, animals, fungi and bacteria. Through the process of decomposition we are tangibly connected back to the soil from which our food is born. Bolstered by tangible experiences with the life-giving forces that make healthy organic soil, mealtime becomes an experience of interdependence and an opportunity for experiential learning.

Creating composting programs that experientially engage learners in the process of return deepens our understanding of whole food cycles and other complex living systems. This article discusses the importance of experiencing compost as a process and provides tangible examples of how to support experiential learning about decomposition in schools.

An End or the Beginning of a Process?

The concept of sustainability can be both conceptually abstract and emotionally triggering. Without tangible connections to real-life systems it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the idea. The whole food system presents a compelling entry into the complex concepts wrapped up in the notion of sustainability. By participating in every aspect of the food cycle, students are empowered to connect their daily activities to a more complete understanding of complex systems.

The term food cycle describes a circular food system that encompasses: food production (growing and harvesting), procurement, preparation, sharing, and food waste management. Once food is growing close to home, compost becomes integral to closing the food cycle loop and making it sustainable, or circular. In the journal of Research in Science Education, Ero-Tolliver et al.1 describe how, “Educational treatments of life cycles almost always conclude with the death of the organism, even though processes of decay are at least as consequential for the health and balance of our world.” The lack of proper treatment and appreciation for the process of decay has precipitated a concerning societal legacy that assumes waste and death to be an ugly end-point to be feared or hauled away. This cultural conception belies the essential process of decomposition and rebirth and prohibits many from appreciating the value of whole food cycles.

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Globally 1.3 billion tonnes of food, worth US $1 trillion is wasted each year.2 In Metro Vancouver, where I live, 450,000 tonnes of food waste is hauled to the landfill each year enough to fill 280 Olympic sized swimming pools.3 The Vancouver School Board estimates that 38% of its landfill bound trash is comprised of food waste,4 a statistic similar to many other school districts across North America.5 This waste represents a huge loss of energy and is one profound outcome of an unsustainable food system. Recycling even a small portion of this waste back into local food production would make a significant contribution towards creating a more sustainable food system.

It is worth pausing to question the educational implications of efficient systems that haul away and process organic waste into useable soil. Though industrial methods of composting do produce useable products that can be re-circulated back into regional food cycles, they do not necessarily provide students a tangible connection to the process of decay. Educators have an important role to play in supporting an appreciation and understanding of this life-giving process. In decomposition there is the promise of new growth. Throwing food away is not an end, and the way in which we dispose of food has a lot to tell us about our attitudes and values. Coming into a relationship with the process of decay opens one up to an appreciation of the interdependent nature of life, which must surely be a prerequisite to understanding the notion of sustainability.

Decomposition isn’t scary. There is a good reason our bodies are turned off by the site of rotting organic materials (we definitely shouldn’t eat them), but looking at them and understanding how they break down can’t hurt us. Over generations of hiding decomposition the western mind has been socialized to fear and revile that which is about to rot. It seems our natural ick factor has been amplifed many times in this process. We’ve forgotten that when things die, they stand at the beginning of a beautiful and complex process of decomposition. Ero-Tolliver et al.1 explain that in much elementary science education today, “decay is conceived as an index of the endpoint of life and not as a process.”

On-site Composting at School

For the past ten years I have been working in different capacities as both a researcher and environmental educator in Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, supporting teachers and learning how to adequately incorporate decay in to the classroom. Of Vancouver’s 108 public schools at least 39 do some composting on-site. While there is value in every effort to compost food waste on school grounds, there are big hurdles to overcome in establishing effective systems to compost food scraps at school. Here I describe what I have learned about the most common elements of successful on-site composting systems in schools, and present some thoughts on how educators might use these systems to critically engage the process of decomposition in their own teaching practice.

Student Leadership

Student “Green Teams” often play a key role in inspiring their school community to begin composting. In this model students collect and manage compost from bins located in a school cafeteria, lunchroom and/or supportive classrooms. If one exists, the cafeteria is often the best place to begin compost collection, as it is an easy place to separate vegetable scraps from harder to compost meats and oils. In elementary schools, where cafeterias are rare, supportive teachers often play a key role in ensuring their students properly use classroom or lunchroom collection bins. Compost from student-initiated programs is effectively processed in 3-bin style compost systems where compost is piled and managed in three side-by-side one-cubic meter containers (other backyard composters or large in-vessel systems can also be effective). It’s obviously important to ensure that the school compost system has the capacity to process the amount of waste being collected – scalable composting systems in which another bin is easily added are helpful in this regard. Another key to effectively managing a compost system is ensuring adequate amounts of carbon are being mixed in (commonly in the form of leaves or shredded paper) with the relatively nitrogenous food scraps being added from school collection.

Student led systems are often made sustainable by efforts to systematize student compost collection. By enshrining compost collection as a role of the school “Green Team,” or as a part of the curriculum for primary students (two common examples), student-run systems are created to ensure long-term success. Making compost collection a formal responsibility of one or more student groups enables the program to last through many generations of student leadership. Systematizing a program better enables compost collection to carry on after the student’s who first supported it graduate.

Many effective student led composting programs are supported by community organizations, such as local community centres, neighborhood groups or environmental organizations. This kind of outside support is often easy to find; many community groups are looking for meaningful ways to engage youth in their area and are often keen to be involved with a local school. Such outside support can greatly increase compost knowledge in a school community.

As educators, we can support students in setting up lasting compost collection programs in our schools by remembering the importance of process. It’s important that leaders are curious about the process of composting and help learners to see the beauty and complexity that turns a banana peel back into soil. I have often witnessed well-run composting programs in which both students and staff have a very strong aversion to looking inside the compost bins. Instilling genuine curiosity about what’s going on in there is really important!

Take the time to investigate what’s living in your compost. Use microscopes and magnifying glasses. Spread compost out on big sheets or tarps and give students gloves and little sticks to poke around. Watch compost over time. Observe how different items break down in different environments. Take time to reflect, to question, to wonder. Notice that soil looks different in different places. Go back and look some more. Remember that the Internet and your school or local library are well stocked with easy to understand resources to help you get started. Local garden centres and community groups often host beginner composting workshops. If you rely heavily on curiosity and intuition, I expect you will one day become a real compost expert!

In the Classroom

The truth, as described by many schools’ leading compost advocates, is that compost is hard to maintain on school grounds. Neighbors may throw their waste in, energy to manage the compost ebbs and flows, and pests can become an issue. Given most teachers’ already busy schedules it all just becomes too much to manage. The result? Many educators espouse in-classroom compost systems as the way to go. Vermicompost (worm bins) are a fun, clean and relatively easy way to compost vegetable and fruit scraps from classroom meals right in the classroom. The soil students make in class can be used to grow microgreens on bright windowsills or in a small school garden, and these can easily be harvested and eaten in a salad.

Beyond this full experience of the food cycle, a classroom vermicompost bin provides a ready example of the process of decay, which can be referred to throughout the school year. By comparing how apple cores break down in different conditions, elementary students can come to better understand the role of worms and other micro and macro organisms in decomposition. Bringing samples of soil from their home, students can compare different kinds of soil and come to appreciate the diversity of mechanisms through which soil is made. By watching their food waste transform inside the class worm bin, students can come to better appreciate decay. You could even investigate the FBI (the fungi, bacteria and invertebrates that work in every compost). In secondary schools, students and teachers often design experiments and perform research to engage in active learning about the compost process while satisfying core curricula. These examples are fit for both indoor vermicomposting and outdoors or backyard styles of composting.

A Whole School Approach

There are a few inspiring examples of schools that have successfully designed composting programs that collect and compost food waste from virtually every class and food service room in the school. Such involved and comprehensive on-site composting programs tend to be initiated by a highly motivated teacher who is supported closely in the school by one or more of their colleagues. Program design and compost consultation are frequently provided by outside organizations and the entire effort is almost always, at least philosophically, supported by the school’s administration. As in the student-initiated example, ensuring that compost collection is institutionalized within the school culture is essential for the long-term sustainability of a whole school approach. Centralizing collection bins in the areas where most food scraps are produced is another key to creating an effective system. Relying on broad based participation from many individuals in the school tends to fail – while creating repeatable and simple processes for designated groups to follow tends to ensure success.

With school wide compost collection, composting becomes a part of the ethos of the school community. In my experience of whole school compost systems, there is always a school garden where the compost is being used; successful schools will sometimes host big harvest celebration events to celebrate the community’s work in creating a sustainable food cycle. Discussions about compost in these schools become frequent. Students and staff routinely engage in simple conversations about compost. Teachers describe that students know that the soil made from school food scraps gets used in the garden to replenish the nutrients in the soil to grow the food that they eat.

While this is an important thing to know, it does not necessarily include an understanding of the process of decay. Even these highly advanced whole school composting approaches often neglect to connect learners to an understanding of decomposition. In trying to effectively communicate the basics of what bins to put different pieces of trash into, compost collection programs often perpetuate the concept of waste as an end. Such programs almost always engage in broad based school wide communications, including all school assemblies; integrating at least an introduction to the process of decay into these communications seems an important first step in creating a transformative school wide on-site composting program. I recommend that schools with composting programs set a goal to create a culture of curiosity about the process of decay.

Making Food Waste Illegal

Many communities are faced with difficult questions regarding how to safely dispose of an entire region’s waste. As landfills reach capacity and societies demand greener infrastructure, many municipalities are implementing compost collection policies and programs to divert waste from landfills. Such initiatives result in organic waste being separated from landfill bound trash and hauled away to large industrial composting facilities. The waste hauling industry is rapidly shifting to meet this new demand, and many companies now offer compost removal alongside recycling and waste hauling options.

Here in Vancouver, the Vancouver School Board recently took steps towards rolling out an organics diversion program that will run in all facilities in the district by 2015. The program was instituted to ensure that the school board was compliant with Metro Vancouver’s recently implemented ban on food scraps and other organic materials in the landfill. At the beginning of 2015, it became illegal to throw organic waste into the garbage in Metro Vancouver! This kind of policy instrument has been implemented in many cities across North America and is being explored by many more as a way to divert waste from the landfill. With individual schools and school boards also considering implementing organics collection as part of their waste management contracts, it’s worth investigating the impact that these collection programs have on student learning, and how they can support or detract from existing on-site composting programs.

There are real benefits to institutional compost collection programs in schools. They enable the efficient composting of all organic waste, something not even the most advanced on-site programs are able to achieve (in-part due to the challenge of safely composting large amounts of bones and meat on site). The implementation of an institutional collection program also presents an opportunity to highlight the different scales of organic waste recycling (backyard to large scale industrial), and the benefits, drawbacks and impacts of each. This brings opportunities for teachers to investigate the ecological, social and economic realities of different methods of composting. The need for mixed methods of composting adequately reflects municipal reality and supports curriculum investigating waste stream issues in the community. Perhaps most importantly, institutional compost collection makes composting easier, more efficient and provides a platform for teachers to start conversations about the food cycle and the important role of compost in completing the food cycle loop.

With these benefits to institutional composting come a variety of challenges. Perhaps most notably, institutional collection removes the process of composting from immediate awareness. Organic waste simply goes “away” along with garbage and recycling. Hauling compost to an industrial processing facility reduces the urgency and desire for school based composting initiatives and can impact existing on-site composting programs. While institutional composting may be an important remedy for regional waste issues, I have seen it disempower individuals and programs that are leading progressive educational approaches to decay. Basic organic waste collection programs certainly do not inherently promote deeper engagement with the process of composting, and most often do not explicitly connect food waste as an important connecting piece in the whole food cycle.

In the end, it is up to educators to utilize a composting program to its best effect. In order to integrate food cycle and decomposition education into institutional collection systems it is best if many actors are working together to support such integration. Resources, support and advice can be offered by the school board when programs are initiated; school staff can work together to creatively engage decomposition and food cycle learning into the roll out of their new compost collection program; students can lead peer-based learning and modeling and support the school community in understanding the processes at play in their school’s compost collection bins.

Many green teachers in Vancouver fear that compost collection programs will not be supported as learning opportunities by their peers and leaders, and that they will be left to single-handedly carry the extra weight of trying to educate their school community on the life giving process of decay. Many of these teachers suggest that early communication about planned organics collection programs would be very helpful. It is also important that everyone in the school community is on board and agrees on who is responsible for what in regards to the rollout of school wide organics collection programs. School boards have a key role to play in facilitating these communications and leaders in the school community must make it clear that compost education is a priority.

Even dedicated compost educators often neglect the essential truth of compost as a process of decay. Classroom compost education tends to focus on the environmental benefits of waste reduction, framing organic waste as another kind of garbage at the end of its life. Our socially constructed fear of death has created a cultural legacy that greatly amplifies our natural distaste for decay. These social barriers combine with structural challenges to make composting in schools very difficult. If we are going to close the food cycle loop, we must address these difficulties by understanding and exploring the life giving process of decomposition.

With the average person eating three meals every single day, at least one of which is during school hours, educators have an ever-present opportunity to experientially engage learners in conversations about sustainable food systems. By understanding that one’s banana peel is not just the end of a snack, but the beginning of an essential life-giving process, learners gain the conceptual tools to understand themselves as interdependent beings. Decomposition is a process that tangibly connects the food we eat to the soil it was grown in. Effective compost education honors and engages this life giving process and fosters a culture of curiosity and respect for the wonder of decay.

Notes

1. Ero-Tolliver, I., Lucas, D., & Schauble, L. (2013). Young Children’s Thinking About Decomposition: Early Modeling Entrees to Complex Ideas in Science. Research in Science Education, 43(5), 2137-2152. Available on-line at http://www.academia.edu/6541640/Young_Childrens_Thinking_About_Decomposition_Early_Modeling_Entrees_to_Complex_Ideas_in_Science
2. United Nations Environment Program. (2014). Prevention and reduction of food and drink waste in businesses and households – Guidance for governments, local authorities, businesses and other organisations, Version 1.0. Available on-line at http://www.fao.org/fleadmin/user_upload/save-food/PDF/ Guidance-content.pdf
3. Metro Vancouver. (2010). Integrated solid waste resource management plan: A solid waste management plan for the Greater Vancouver Regional District and member municipalities. Available on-line at http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solid-waste/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/services/ solid-waste/SolidWastePublications/ISWRMP.pdf&action=default&DefaultIt emO pen=1
4. Vancouver School Board. (2010). Resource use and waste reduction action plan. Available on-line at http://www.vsb.bc.ca/sites/default/fles/publications/VSB%20WASTE%20Action%20Plan.Draft%203.3.pdf
5. EndFoodWasteNow.org. (2013). Schools. Available on-line at http://www. endfoodwastenow.org/index.php/issues/issues-schools

 

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Matthew Kemshaw is a Research Facilitator with the Think&EatGreen@School project in Vancouver, British Columbia. Focussing on building healthy and sustainable school food systems by facilitating action research, the project enables students, teachers, and policy makers to influence where their food comes from and how it is produced. Learn more at www.thinkeatgreen.ca or contact the author via matthewkemshaw@gmail.com