compost, recycle, donate, repeatBrookline high school is combatting food waste, one tray at a time
John Dempsey is the head of the Zero Waste Committee volunteer group and has been present since the inception of the project. Here, he and his colleague Anne Coles are checking to see if the students have correctly separated their trash and food scraps into the correct bins.
Not all students have yet fully grasped the concept of composting and recycling and which types of packaging go into which bin, which means that volunteers and custodians sometimes have to come in after them and sort through the bins. “Many students engage in what we can ‘optimistic recycling,’ in which they try to compost or recycle food that is still in some form of packaging,” said Dempsey. “But the composting service we work with only accepts very small amounts of contamination, so we have to go in after them and make sure that everything is separated correctly.”
Leftover shelf-stable food items are set aside to be donated to the Brookline Food Pantry, as students are unable to pick and chose which parts of their meal they want to keep or not because of certain FDA regulations.
As students leave the dining hall to return to class, Dempsey picks up the last scraps of food and packaging left on the tables. “Most students are pretty good about cleaning up after themselves,” he says.
Most students have slowly integrated the habit of going to the recycling area and sorting through their leftovers once they are done with their meals, while also making sure that their tables are clean before going back to class.
Volunteers usually drop off foods that need to be refrigerated at Brookline Village’s Community Fridge on Station Street.
