Aspen High School’s Earth Group is taking the initiative to start a district-wide composting project. Travis Moore, the AHS biology teacher, as well as a multitude of AHS students are working with custodial staff to implement a more eco-friendly waste management system.

The Earth Group’s composting project is simply a way to start getting the school’s student population to begin composting.

The kitchen staff has been composting for a while now, and they know how to do it, and it’s easy for them. In the commons, on the other hand, the school has started composting more recently. At the beginning of the year, the bags that were in the composting section of the trash receptacles weren’t compostable, so even if people were composting, it was going to the same place as the trash was.

The Earth Group has set up meetings with the district’s custodial staff and has taught them which bags of waste go where, and where the compost goes. Now, all of the compost is going into the right bins outside of the schools and is being taken to the landfill separately from the trash, so that it doesn’t get contaminated.

Eva McDonough, a junior at AHS, has been working hard to bring this project to the student body. She hopes the students will respond positively to this project.

“Hopefully [the student body] will be very supportive and start taking personal initiative and using their personal action to actually get the compost where it needs to go and to get the recycling where it needs to go because, at the end of the day, it just depends on the people that are doing it,” McDonough said.

This project is student-driven. The first step was taken last school year by Chloe Brettmann, and this year, the Earth Group is proceeding with it. Moore’s goal is to keep the composting project as much up to the students as he can.

“I try and provide support if I can, but really it’s driven by people like Eva and like Chloe and the rest of the Earth Group who are passionate about it and want to see change, and they work their extra hours when they can to set up meetings, some to follow up, and I’m just here to support,” Moore says.

The Earth Group hopes to bring more awareness to the students and teachers in our district about where things go, and they believe that will be the most challenging part of this process. McDonough hopes everyone will take personal initiative to get their compost and recycling to where it needs to go.

“I think it’s really difficult because people just don’t care, and they’re busy, and they’re just moving through their day without thinking about where to put their trash,” McDonough says.

Travis and Eva,

What is the composting project?
So initially we didn’t have composting in the commons. We’ve been composting in the kitchen for a while now. They do a really good job. They know how to do it, it’s not contaminated, it’s basically all food scraps, it’s really easy for them. And then in the commons we hadn’t been composting for various reasons. Initially there wasn’t compost bags at the beginning of this year, We didn’t have composting bags in the actual compost section of the trash receptacles, and so even if you did put your compost in there it wasn’t going to the compost. It was going straight to the trash, everything was. So then we had a bunch of meetings and stuff. We talked to the custodians and now we actually have the compostable bags going in the right place, and then the compost is going to the separate bins outside of the school and going to the landfill. And so that was our main goal is just to get that sustainably running so that we didn’t have to have Earth Group kids physically there putting in the bags and taking them out, so now the custodians do that and it doesn’t mean that we have to be there every single lunch period and if we’re not there then it’s just trash. So it just was really about making a sustainable system for the composting.
What steps have you taken?
So the biggest ones have been just working with the custodians to get that system working. And so we’ve had a lot of meetings with Gary Vevra who us the custodial director, and then we’ve also had meetings with all of the custodians from the district explaining what we want them to do and how we want them to do it. And then we had other outreach things, like we went on Skier TV this week and we talked about what actually goes in the compost and things like that.
What challenges have you faced?
I think the most challenging thing about this is definitely outreach and telling people where they need to put their compost because some people are lazy and they don’t want to or they just don’t even look at where they need to put their stuff, or the signs, and so they just throw everything into the trash or the first trash receptacle they see and they just put it in there instead of thinking about where to put their stuff. And so it’s getting the students to actively participate and not getting that contamination as well as just working with the custodians because they’re very busy and it’s hard to schedule meetings with them.
How do you hope students and teachers will respond to it?
Hopefully they will be very supportive and start taking personal initiative and using their personal action to actually get the compost were it needs to go and to get the recycling where it needs to go because at the end of the day it just depends on the people that are doing it because we can’t be there every single day saying “please put this here, put this in the recycling” because that’s just nos sustainable. And so I hope that everyone will be very responsible in their own right and take that initiative to put everything in the right place.
Travis, as a teacher, how involved are you with this? Are you letting the students take control?
That’s always my goal. This is something that we’ve tried to do for years and it would come, and it would go and we had it going for a long time. And then there was the whole bear problem… anyway, it’s been student driven for a long time. I’ve just been helping facilitate it. More recently though, starting with Chloe last year, students really took control of it and took the initiative to set up meetings to initiate the process with all sorts of people. There’s a lot of different people who are players in this from the building supervisor to the principles to superintendents to all sorts of people to the waste management people. So I’m basically just the mentor of the Earth Group. I try and help facilitate stuff. I try and provide support if I can but really it’s driven by people like Eva and like Chloe and the rest of the earth group who are passionate about it and want to see change and they work their extra hours when they can to set up meetings, some to follow up, and I’m just here to support.
Eva, as a student, do you believe our student body will listen to your goals, and help accomplish them?
Hopefully, I mean, I don’t know if the student body will listen. I’m hoping that they will. I know that when we did the barbeque we had to stand there physically and tell people where to put their stuff to make sure that the compost doesn’t get contaminated and then we had to sort through it with gloves, and it was just an interesting experience. But I think it’s really difficult because people just don’t care and they’re busy and they’re just moving through their day without thinking about where to put their trash.