Hastings Green Team – Lunch Composting

Sustainability is such an important concept for our students to grasp and since the compost pickup program has been funded by LPS across all schools since 2016.

Our Green Team are a group of parent volunteers who assist the children with recycling and composting during lunchtime. Our mission is:

Reduce the lunch waste
Help Hastings students learn to recycle and save the environment

Even if your busy schedule does not allow your presence at the cafeteria in the middle of the day, you could still help by:

Recycling/composting at home
Packing your child’s lunch with reusable food and drink containers
Talking to your child about the recycling/composting at school
Volunteering at special events (below is a snapshot of how much we recycled and composted at 2017 Hastings Harvest Run)

We hope that the initiative will be an educational experience for our children and that it will have a positive and lasting impact on their lives and the world in general.

Our three-step trash reduction process:

Trash bin	Throw out plastic utensils, straws, Ziploc bags, Foil-type juice pouches (like Capri Sun), milk and juice boxes (including the liquid in them), plastic containers
Compost bin	Dump and tap – dump leftover food out of plastic containers and tap on the side of the compost bin to make the containers as empty as possible
Floor	Stack trays on the floor (they will go in the compost bin in stacks after the last lunch to reduce volume)

Our goal is to have students compost correctly even on the days when parent volunteers are not present. To achieve this, we encourage the children to work independently by:

Assisting them verbally and ensuring the right items are placed in the right zero waste bins
Reminding younger ones to stack trays and to take their time sorting things

How do you get in touch with the Green Team at other schools? https://www.lexingtongreenteams.org/ plus you’ll find tons of cool stuff 😉