St. Johnsbury Academy senior Morgan Hill adds items to the compost station as English teacher James Bentley hauls away filled containers. 

The latest in an ongoing series of St. Johnsbury Academy environmental sustainability and energy conservation projects began today as the school introduced a full-scale composting of cafeteria waste.
    The cafeteria composting effort was born during the early part of the 2008-2009 school year, when the school’s Environmental Focus Group decided to act on the findings of several senior research projects and explore the possibility of establishing a composting system to handle waste discarded from the school’s kitchen, which prepares lunches for more than 1,000 students, teachers, and staff during the school week, and breakfasts and dinners for the Academy’s approximately 235 boarding students seven days a week.
    “We decided that we would test the system for four weeks in March and April to see how it worked,” English teacher James Bentley, the focus group’s leader, said. “Academy members generously donated more than 60 five-gallon buckets and lids, and members of our group volunteered their afternoons to transport compost” to an area farm.
       Another member of the group, Social Studies instructor Karen Alexander, enlisted several students from the school’s National Honor Society chapter to donate after-school time to clean and help maintain the system.
    “In four weeks, we composted close to 3,500 pounds of compost from kitchen scraps alone, Bentley said.
    “Right now, the school has the capacity to collect and transport up to 1,500 pounds of compost a week,” Bentley said. “If we compost for 20 weeks this school year, we can direct up to 15 tons of waste away from a landfill and into a local business at a lower dumping cost.”
    The new composting program will also allow the school to renegotiate its commercial trash hauling costs, “saving the Academy money while improving our environmental sustainability,” Bentley added.
     During the early part of the project, members of the school’s National Honor Society chapter and faculty volunteers will collect lunch food waste and kitchen scraps during the school week, but Bentley said he “hopes we can expand to other meals,” including breakfast, evening, and weekend meals for Academy boarding students, as the project progresses.
           Several of the environmental and energy saving projects are the result of senior Capstone research projects, including switching light sources in the illuminated exit signs in campus buildings from incandescent bulbs to LEDs, conducting a large tree restoration project to reduce erosion on a hillside behind a school dormitory, research to evaluate the opportunity to install high-efficiency florescent lighting in the hallways of Streeter Hall, and others.
    Ideas generated independently or in small groups by the students, teachers, and staff members have provided a large share of the inspiration for the school’s efforts.   Teacher and staff-inspired efforts often spring from concerns and ideas first raised by members of the school’s Environmental Focus Group, started by French teacher Peter O’Brien, and the student-run Environmental Club.
     The school’s recycling effort, now firmly established as an ongoing campus-wide project, started several years ago when O’Brien began collecting waste paper generated in his classroom and encouraged his colleagues to do the same.
    “Paper recycling was hit-and-miss here for the first few years,” Social Studies teacher Dale Urie, one of the first participants, said. “Some teachers were passionate about recycling and eager try it, but others didn’t seem to have much interest.”
    Some teachers were probably reluctant to join because of the need to transfer the paper gathered to a single collection site, which could be 100 yards or more from the teacher’s classroom, Urie continued. Recyclers also had to remove staples from the paper collected because it was destined to become bedding for cows at an area farm.
    “It became obvious that we needed a system where teachers would be less burdened, and that meant we needed more labor,” Urie added.
    Four years ago, Urie, who was then serving as Class Dean for the school’s freshman class, found a solution to the labor shortage.
    “I’d been trying to think of ways for our freshmen to do things together as a bonding experience, hoping sharing a common experience would help them create a class identity,” he said.
    After winning approval for the plan from the school’s administration, Urie organized a system where every member of the freshmen class, working in teacher-supervised groups of 10-12 students each, collected recyclable paper and delivered it to several new collection bins located throughout the campus.
    Today, similar class-wide environmental efforts have expanded throughout the entire approximately 1,000-member student body with the freshman class, led by Class Dean Jerry Prevost, remaining responsible for paper collection and sophomores under the direction of Class Dean Christopher Dussault collecting plastic and tin.
    “Peter O’Brien brought recycling to the school’s attention and it snowballed from there,” Urie said. “The class recycling projects we have now are a great example of a grassroots movement with support from the top that is making a real difference and benefits everyone.”