Lunchroom Composting to Teach Kids Environmental Lessons

By Heather Knight
SF Chronicle/SFGate
Friday, September 16, 2005

Many more San Francisco children will learn this year that their brown paper bags, crumpled napkins, milk cartons and food scraps can have life beyond the school cafeteria, thanks to a partnership between the San Francisco Unified School District and the city's Department of the Environment called "Food to Flowers," a 5-year-old program that teaches kids about the environment by introducing composting to their lunchrooms.

At participating schools, organic material is collected in a cart and hauled to the Jepson Prairie Compost Facility, where it is turned into fertilizer for Bay Area farms, wineries, landscape companies and school garden programs. The program diverts 500 tons of organic material each school year from the Altamont landfill, helping to reduce the 6 million pounds of garbage produced by the city daily.

Most of the city's public and private schools have implemented recycling programs, but only 20 percent have dealt with organic scraps. Now, district schools and 16 private schools are involved in "Food to Flowers," and a dozen new public schools were added this year. The Department of the Environment aims to include all schools in the program, which it says would make San Francisco the first city in the world to have every school compost.

Students can learn more about the reasons behind composting through the Department of the Environment's lesson plans, fact sheets and assemblies that teach about waste, recycling and composting.

An added bonus for the school district is decreased garbage fees, said Martin Escalante, director of custodial services for the district.

"For the same amount of garbage, it would cost us double, at least," he said, adding the program is "environmentally the right thing to do."

To learn more about the program, call (415) 355-3742 or e-mail environment@sfgov.org.