At lunch across Belmont schools, kids line up and grab compostable lunch trays for their food. But at the end of the day, most of the trays end up in the trash, along with wasted food.
Two school programs are fighting to change that.
There are two composting programs in the Belmont schools: one at Chenery Upper Elementary School, established in the mid-2000s, and one at Belmont High School, which started in September.
“There are a lot of environmental challenges that we’re all facing right now, and we’re not going to compost away all of them, but it’s a positive step,” said sixth-grade teacher Ben Ligon.
Both programs are primarily student-driven. At Chenery, Ligon helps organize the student volunteers, dubbed the “Trash Bashers.” At lunches, the Trash Bashers help ensure that trash and compostable items end up in the correct bins.
“I do think it’s a nice place where kids can gain a sense of leadership and ownership on making a difference in your community that their actions matter,” said Ligon. “Kids feel like they want to make a difference, and this is one way they can.”
High school junior Srishti Kar was a Trash Basher as a Chenery student, and has maintained a passion for environmentalism. Kar saw firsthand the amount of food waste generated by students and sought to close the gap. She and other members of the Climate Action Club became determined to start their own composting program at the high school.
They first launched the program in 2023 but disbanded it when the club struggled to sustain it. In the fall, the group tried again, this time with a large bin that’s available during lunch five days a week.
“We’ve made progress, but there’s still definitely a long way to go,” Kar said.
A 2021 Pennsylvania State University study found that American school cafeterias tend to waste more food than those in other developed countries, sometimes up to 50% of the food served. About 94 billion pounds of food are wasted each year nationwide, according to Feeding America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing food insecurity.
While the Climate Action Club’s program has expanded the district’s composting capacity, the students say there is a considerable road ahead to creating a thriving program in Belmont.
At the high school, there is only one composting bin that is taken out during lunchtime. However, because students aren’t required to eat lunch in the cafeteria area, compostable items and food waste still often end up in the trash. Some students don’t know what items are compostable, while others don’t even know about the bin or don’t take the time to find it, junior A.J. Shaw said.
“I think a lot of the students here are just used to throwing everything away in one bin, so they just don’t feel the need to sort their trash into compost and normal trash,” Shaw said.
Although the two schools share a building, Belmont Middle School (BMS) has no composting program.
Kar and the Climate Action Club want to expand their program to BMS in the future to promote continuity with Chenery’s program. Teaching kids to be conscious of where their food waste goes can be tricky enough — a gap in composting efforts means that the “rash Bashers’efforts can often be forgotten over the two years between Chenery and the high school.
“It would be nice to see compost implemented in all four elementary schools so that we develop those habits earlier,” Kar said.
At an April School Committee meeting, Ligon and Kar both addressed the committee, explaining the challenges and accomplishments of the two composting programs. Ligon advocated expanding composting in elementary schools, an idea that was met with skepticism by school leaders.
Although composting is beneficial for the planet and can even save the district money, asking young students to consciously think about waste is easier said than done, and would likely require additional staffing to monitor, according to Superintendent Jill Geiser.
“We can’t ask first and third graders and second graders to do that level of work, right? So there we would need to have staff that would be able to put in that time and to oversee it, that could be a budget implication on that,” Geiser said at the meeting.
However, even if the process isn’t straightforward, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a try, compost advocates said.
“I understand the pushback, but it’s something that I think they could be taught,” Ligon said. “I think we’re underestimating what a six- or seven-year-old child could do. I think the best time to learn is when they’re young.”
Ligon added that with additional advisers and staffing for composting programs, students will be able to grasp how the process works — and why it matters. Currently, Ligon is the only teacher who oversees Chenery’s program. When the school year starts up, he invites parent volunteers to come in during lunch to help the Trash Bashers monitor the bins.
Still, once left to their own devices, he said he’s seen some kids fall back to old habits, and the student volunteers face occasional teasing from peers.
“Once those parent volunteers disappear, even though most kids, the majority, do the right thing, some kids don’t, and that’s going to be a challenge,” he said.
For environmental advocates like Ligon and Kar, composting is a small step to combat climate change. Kar, Shaw and other members of the Climate Action Club have taken their advocacy to town boards and even the state level.
Though it can’t be done overnight, investing in composting is a solid step forward for Belmont and its future, Ligon said.
“Kids internalize these habits,” Ligon said, “just like they internalize other good community habits, [including] being environmental stewards of their planet at a younger age, such that when they come to Chenery, there’s ideally no need for Trash Bashers.”