As an intern with the Solana Center, I am concentrating my year's research on the impact of composting and recycling programs on the volume of a school's total daily waste. The first school that I have been involved with is San Dieguito Academy, located in Encinitas. Initial research showed that SDA students throw away an average of 198.2 lbs of recyclable materials daily. This includes items such as bottles, cans, paper, and 116 lbs of compostable materials. When projected, this data shows that SDA throws away 37,063 lbs of recyclable materials annually. These outrageous numbers sparked the interest of the school's environmental club, Project Zero Waste. Senior Sean Fogarty and Junior Alexa Shapiro have led the club's movement to introduce school-wide recycling and composting programs in order to improve these statistics.
           
Through working with the Solana Center, and with donations by the City of Encinitas, our first big step was the introduction of the Smith and Hawken Biostack compost bins to the SDA Garden. Eight in total, these Biostacks were donated to SDA as part of the Master Composter Training Course, where local residents are taught to be fluent in every aspect of composting. Throughout a five week course, SDA student Sean and I, along with thirty-five other San Diego county residents, learned everything from the basic components of static composting, to the delicate circumstances required for vermicomposting, and even the intricate workings of large-scale composting, such as at the Miramar Greenery. The Biostacks were filled and turned weekly. This hands-on learning approach really helped both me and the students at SDA to begin understanding the potential of composting at their school.
 
The next step along our journey was the establishment of a large vermicomposting bin. The Encinitas Rotary Club donated funds and volunteer hours to Solana Center for the construction of a large school worm bin for SDA. With the involvement of SDA students, Solana Center workers, and thanks to the donations by the Rotarians, an 8-foot long vermicomposting bin was constructed on site at the SDA campus, and ten pounds of red wigglers, a composting worm, were added to the bin. Worm tea and finished compost harvested from SDA's bins will be used in the school garden.

So far, our hard work has been paying off. Now there are three forms of recycling available to the SDA student body: recycling, composting, and vermicomposting. With even further involvement of the SDA Garden Club, the Culinary Arts program, and even the kitchen and landscaping crews, this school hopes to completely close-the-loop and truly become a Zero Waste School.

Kitchen waste, yard clippings, paper, coffee grounds, and other organic materials that are produced in the home are all considered "biodegradable". This term has a positive connotation, especially to us environmentalists. It means that they can be broken down into their raw materials by a variety of living organisms such as microbes (helpful bacteria, protozoa and fungi), earthworms and many different arthropods. Many of our choices at stores are based on purchasing materials that will biodegrade or "rot".  The theory is that the materials will then be reincorporated as plant nutrients and find their way back into the food chain in a healthy ecosystem.
 
In the United States and in many other developed countries, we over-produce and generate a lot of waste. We have become a throw-away society, keeping our homes neat and tidy by either rinsing things down our drains or putting wastes in plastic bags out on the curb where it all goes out of sight, out of mind. The illusion is that we have solved our problems and shouldn't worry because the waste will biodegrade on its own. We sometimes further the cause by putting "green" waste into special bins to be picked up separately to be kept out of landfills. However, most of us don't realize is that almost all of the biodegradable material that we flush, rinse or throw out is going to end up breaking down in an anaerobic environment either as sewage sludge or in most cases in landfills. The separated green waste most often gets used as ADC, "Alternate Daily Cover" to top off the day's trash which is then layered over the next day, so it gets buried anyhow. Locally, the cities of San Diego and Oceanside have composting facilities where green waste collected at the curb can be taken to be composted or mulched. But if you do not live in those cities or in an area where composting facilities are available, you do not necessarily keep it out of the landfill by separating it.