Growing Habits That Last: Teaching the Next Generation About Composting

This school year, the City of Key West Utilities Department and the Montessori Children's School of Key West are teaming up to turn food waste into garden gold.

For younger students, a collection bin in each classroom and a centrally located tumbling composter makes the process fun and interactive. Students will drop in their banana peels, veggie scraps, and even eggshells instead of tossing them in the trash. The students get to be compost "chefs," adding the perfect recipe of browns (like crunchy leaves, shredded cardboard, and paper) and greens (like fruit and veggie scraps). With a spin of their tumbling composter each day, they'll watch food scraps magically transform into rich compost for their school garden-where they'll grow food they can harvest and eat themselves.

Older students will take on a different challenge: vermicomposting-composting with worms. By feeding red wigglers a mix of "browns" (carbon-rich items) and "greens" (nitrogen-rich items) the worms will produce castings which enrich soil and a nutrient-rich "worm tea," both are powerful natural fertilizers for their garden. Stay tuned to see what they grow.

Let's take inspiration from these students and bring the lesson home, what steps can we take in our own kitchen to cut back on food waste? The average American family of four throws out approximately $1,600 each year in produce, that's over $130.00 a month. Planning meals, understanding expiration labels, freezing food for later use, composting, and donating food are great ways to help reduce food waste.

The Montessori's on-campus goal is to create a thought process change in our youngest generation. "We want children to learn and create a lifelong habit that food waste goes somewhere else, as a fact of life."

"We think that beginning this at the earliest ages as a regular, habitual part of their day," says Recycling Coordinator Keely Kessler, "will create a lifelong reality that is easily incorporated into the world that each of them creates as they grow. From lunch scraps to garden snacks, students are learning that even food waste can have a second life. Let's normalize these habits in our schools, businesses, and homes."