Marcellus awarded $4,000 grant for food composting program

The Onondaga Resource Recovery Agency turns Marcellus
cafeteria waste into this nutrient-rich mulch.

Marcellus Central School District has been awarded a $4,000 Think Green Grant from national nonprofit Keep America Beautiful (KAB) and Waste Management.

The district will use the funds to offset the cost of compostable lunch trays and garbage bags in campus cafeterias, as part of the ongoing food waste composting program launched in Marcellus two years ago.

The program involves the separation of litter and food scraps on students’ lunch trays – and in the cafeteria kitchens – into special recycling bins.

Students (and kitchen employees, too) toss plastic straws and utensils into the trash. The usual recyclables (plastic bottles, milk cartons, etc.) go into typical recycle bins. And then napkins, straw wrappers, biodegradable food trays, milk and food scraps drop into specially marked, yellow containers, whose contents eventually are carted off campus to be shredded and composted into a nutrient-rich mulch by the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency.

Since the program began in April 2012, Marcellus Central Schools have:

• Diverted 15,221 trash bags from area landfills;
• Generated 2,413 bags of compost; and 
• Created 2,413 bags of recyclables. 

“Marcellus continues to lead the way with this innovative, environmentally friendly initiative that has kept thousands of pounds of food waste out of our landfills,” said Keith Watkins, the district’s superintendent of buildings and grounds. “The continued success of this program has been achievable only because of the enthusiastic participation of our students.”

The Waste Management Think Green® Grants are part of the company’s commitment to encourage the development and sustainability of environmental solutions that improve community environments. These merit-based grants support projects that KAB affiliates implement locally, such as community greening, increased recycling and environmental educational programs.

“The proposed community improvement projects you submitted were excellent and we anticipate that the projects will lead to positive results for these communities,” Brenda Mickol, WM’s education solutions representative, said in an email to the 30 grant recipients selected nationwide. “Many of the projects have more than one element, such as beautification, cleanups, recycling, composting to name a few.”