Composting in the time of COVID

[Henriksen, Rebecca]

Hi everyone,

We just started school composting in the past year and were slowly rolling it out schoolwide in our school of 500 students. I am wondering though what the impact of COVID is going to be on school composting systems. I don't think districts are going to allow food waste from student meals to be composted - kitchen waste yes, but not student waste. Our food is all centrally prepared and then delivered to our school kitchen for warming up, so the only other food waste being produced is from our garden. Just wondered if anyone else doing school composting had been contemplating this/gotten info from your district etc.

Thanks and stay safe! Rebekka Henriksen, Zoller School Garden, Schenectady, NY

[Manzano Janelle]

Hi,

 

We have what’s called a Café to Compost program here at San Diego Unified. It is generally just salad bar waste from the cafeteria that can be given to the school gardens. No student waste though. Schools that have a designated and interested garden coordinators reach out to our Food Services. Then we get them connected with their cafeteria leads to save the salad scraps for them. We provide buckets and educate our cafeteria staff on composting (i.e if the garden is doing vermi-composting we give them signage to remind them to not give the garden anything citrus). We do not require weighing how much was saved. Overall, our cafeteria staff don’t generally mind doing it – many like the idea.

 

Let me know if you have other questions.

 

 

Janelle Manzano
Food and Nutrition Services Dept. || Farm to School Program Specialist

858.836.8901|| jman...@sandi.net || 6735 Gifford Way, Rm. 5 || San Diego, CA 92111-6509

  

“Food is not just fuel. Food is about family, food is about community, food is about identity. And we nourish all those things when we eat well.” – Michael Pollan

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