SHARON — Every day after lunch, fifth graders at Sharon Elementary School take turns bringing cafeteria food scraps out to the school’s compost “palace.”

“It’s a lot better for the earth than putting the food into the landfill and it’s also really fun and really good for the community,” Maya Sotak, 11, said during a tour of the system earlier this month.

The May 1 tour, which was one part of the annual Vermont Organics Recycling Summit hosted by the Composting Association of Vermont, gave students the chance to demonstrate how they use the system.

The group of about 10 students carried buckets of about 55 pounds of food scraps from the school cafeteria out to a pavilion next to a plot of raised garden beds. As they weighed the scraps, recorded the data and dumped the waste into the first of three bins where it will become soil, students talked the gathered crowd through the process.

About 16,000 pounds of food goes into the compost system every year from Sharon Elementary School, The Sharon Academy’s Middle School and the local food shelf that is then used to feed the school’s gardens.

“It’s fun and it’s better than sitting in the classroom doing math,” Elio Delfrari, 10, said of working with the compost system.

Sharon Elementary School’s “compost palace,” which became operational in November 2023, was the first of seven school compost systems to get up and running as part of the Upper Valley Super Compost Project.

Under the state’s universal recycling law, or Act 148, Vermont schools are required to reuse or recycle food scraps in some way other than sending them to the landfill. This can include donating edible food for people or animals to eat, composting, or contracting with a hauler to collect food scraps and deliver them to designated facilities. The regulation went into effect in July 2020.

“Vermont passed the law that said you had to separate food scraps, but didn’t tell them what they had to do,” said Cat Buxton, creator and director of the Upper Valley Super Compost Project, an initiative bringing composting to local schools.

Schools save money by participating in the program because they do not have to hire a food scrap hauler which can cost between $500 and $3,000 per year, Buxton said. The Super Compost Project covers the cost of building the compost system and two years of technical support.

“Schools shouldn’t be in a position to manage waste just to manage waste, it should be a lesson,” Buxton said Tuesday.

Hands-on learning

“Kids teaching kids how to compost” is a core part of the Super Compost Project. Recently, the Sharon fifth-graders designed and taught compost-related lessons to kindergarten and third grade students.

“That was really fun because we just got to teach the younger students what they might be doing in the future and the importance of composting and why they should do it,” 11-year-old Maya said.

By teaching other students, the fifth graders learn the composting process back and front and “do the right thing when they come out here,” fifth-grade teacher Dulce O’Hare said. The hands-on learning in the com post system can also be integrated into science, reading, writing and math.

“It’s much more fun to teach that this way than from slides,” O’Hare said.

One of the most interesting things Maddy Tobin, 11, has learned from working the compost system is why it hosts so many decomposers and other organisms.

“If you don’t have healthy soil or compost then the mushrooms won’t grow,” Maddy said.

In addition to creating educational opportunities, on-site composting recycles food waste into a resource that can directly benefit the school, Buxton said.

“Even if we don’t take on any more schools we are already diverting 100,000 pounds (of food waste) a year away from trucks, landfills, digesters, deep packing plants directly into school gardens and community gardens,” Buxton said.

‘Moving the needle’

Creating localized compost systems can help people understand how much waste they produce, Natasha Duarte, director of the Composting Association of Vermont, said. Doing so often leads to less waste because “people are seeing it, they’re touching it, they’re thinking about it.”

Under the state’s recycling law, from 2018 to 2023, the total amount of waste sent to landfills or incinerators in Vermont decreased by 5%. Food waste has decreased 13% by weight, according to a 2024 report from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. The report also estimated that between 50% and 57% of food waste in Vermont is recycled or reused.

Though this is not yet the 100% that the state sought through Act 148, Duarte is optimistic.

“I feel like we are actually tangibly moving the needle and moving in the right direction,” Duarte said in a Wednesday interview.

The Composting Association of Vermont is a statewide organization that promotes composting and food scrap recycling. CAV’s former executive director wrote portions of Act 148.

The law was passed in 2012 and implemented in phases beginning in 2014, which Duarte said should have helped to eliminate some of the costs and logistical challenges.

“It wasn’t like all of a sudden it was a law and everyone had to figure out how to comply, there was time, there was some education,” Duarte said.

But, possibly one of the biggest issues with the law’s effectiveness now is the lack of continuous education and legislative support.

“Unfortunately I do see a lot of this concept that it’s sort of one and done,” Duarte said. “...Whereas in reality this is iterative. You need to keep training people, keep talking about it if you want to actually meet your goals.”

Often, one of the biggest barriers to schools, companies and other entities composting locally is technical expertise, Duarte said, which makes programs like the Super Compost Project especially valuable.

Building connections

Buxton started the Super Compost Project in 2022, though she has managed the garden and compost system at Thetford Elementary School since 2007.

Over the years, Buxton, a Sharon resident, has been hired by many schools to consult or to help start compost systems, but she eventually “figured out that schools need more than one or two visits.”

Super Compost Project schools go through one to three years of planning before the system is built to establish a team including teachers, administration, maintenance and food service workers and determine their needs, Buxton said. This helps to avoid common problems and hopefully lends to the longevity of the system.

The other schools currently part of the Super Compost Project are Albert Bridge Elementary School in Brownsville, Marion Cross Elementary School in Norwich, Newbury (Vt.) Elementary School, Samuel Morey Elementary School in Fairlee, Westshire Elementary School in West Fairlee and Waits River Valley School in East Corinth.

Once the compost system is built, schools receive technical and educational support for two years. After this, they are responsible for running and maintaining the system themselves.

In November, Sharon will be the first school set free, but “we’re not going to drop them,” Buxton said. She hopes to continue to volunteer at the school as needed.

“In 10 years, I think all of these schools will still be composting and they’ll have connections to one another.”

Though New Hampshire schools aren’t required to recycle food scraps, Buxton said there has been interest in the Super Compost Project from some Granite State schools, such as those in Hanover, who “want in just because it’s the right thing to do.”

New Hampshire is further behind in terms of food waste laws. Still, as of February any entity in the state that produces more than a ton of food waste per week and is within 20 miles of a facility — such as the Lebanon solid waste facility — that accepts food waste for reuse or recycling is banned from putting food waste into landfills or incinerators.

This regulation is unlikely to apply to most schools, which according to EPA estimates produce about 26 pounds of wasted food per student each year. Entities such as supermarkets, food wholesalers, hotels, hospitals and restaurants are more likely to be regulated.

Moving forward, the Super Compost Project team will start working with a new co hort of schools. Once they have about 20 operating com post systems the goal is to create a tool kit that other schools and communities can use to replicate the work.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.