South School Principal Matt Kascak, along with staff, students and parents, have partnered with local environmental and sustainability charity Planet New Canaan (www.planetnewcanaan.org) to launch a composting initiative at the school. Planet New Canaan is paying for this composting program through the end of the school year with grant funding from the Anderson Fund and community donations.
Launched on March 17, this effort is designed to take compostable items – lunch food scraps, paper napkins, as well as the compostable food trays and plant-based cutlery South School uses, and process them into compost. During the first week, ten 64-gallon bins of compostable materials were collected. In addition, South School collected ten 44-gallon trash cans of water bottles, beverage cartons and other plastic materials for recycling.
This ‘Green Gold’ can be used in gardens and on farms, returned to nurture the Earth from which they came. The alternative? These compostable items usually end up in landfills, where they decompose and generate methane, which is a greenhouse gas. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), over half of the methane released into the atmosphere from landfills comes from landfilled food waste. Composting eliminates this, and turns trash into treasure.
“We decided to return to recycling, which had been stopped when COVID hit, and Planet New Canaan got us involved with composting,” says Principal Kascak. “It’s going extremely well.” Parents assisted with the rollout of the new composting program by volunteering in the lunchroom to help the children navigate the new system.
“Planet New Canaan is grateful for the leadership Principal Kascak and the South School community have shown by supporting this composting initiative, which is so important for the welfare of New Canaan’s children,” says Planet New Canaan board member Katie Owsley. “We look forward to the opportunity to partner with and support New Canaan’s other public schools with their own composting and recycling programs. South School is leading the way!”
With this composting program, New Canaan joins public schools in many neighboring towns, including Greenwich, Wilton and Fairfield.
