Amherst proves fertile for composting programs

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on December 05, 2008

Crocker Farm Elementary School is literally getting in on the ground floor of a bold adventure in composting.

What started out last year as a modest composting effort involving kindergartners led by teacher's aide Ricci Mastroianni has blossomed into a schoolwide effort.

Next year, students could be processing their own compost on site in a large, in-ground bin built by Amherst Regional High School students and using it to grow vegetables on the school grounds for lunch.

In the long run, it could reduce the amount of waste the town generates and has to pay to put in ever-diminishing landfill space while enriching the soil.

"It's so much better than even recycling in a way," said Susan Waite, recycling coordinator for the town. "It makes tons of sense."

Crocker Farm is not the only Amherst school separating its food waste for composting. Wildwood and Mark's Meadow Elementary are doing it too, but Crocker Farm is the only one composting on site.

There was a time when all the Amherst schools participated in a composting program, separating food waste from trash and recyclables and sending it in a truck to Bob Martin's Greenfield farm to be composted. But after giving the schools many chances, Martin told organizers that the waste he was receiving was too contaminated with items that shouldn't have been mixed in with it, like plastic and Styrofoam, Waite said.

Since then, Wildwood parent Meg Vickery restarted the program at that school and Mark's Meadow was able to keep its waste free of contamination, thanks to the vigilance of Mark's Meadow custodian Ted Grab.

Mastroianni started the project last year with kindergartners in Greta Wilcox's class at Crocker Farm, who took to it with gusto. This year, Mastroianni expanded the program to include first-graders, and then children in the other grades simply jumped aboard, putting compostable food waste into two 11-cubic-foot compost bins provided by Waite.

At one point, it got a little chaotic in the cafeteria, because everyone wanted to help, Mastroianni said, so she created charts with lists of jobs. Some of the children are monitors, making sure that plastic utensils aren't inadvertently mixed in; others wash milk cartons, which the town picks up once a week. The younger kids go around the cafeteria and pick up anything gets left.

"When these kids grow up, composting is going to be a given," Mastroianni said. She is seeing to it that they are separating waste in a way that will create compost that is not smelly or crawling with maggots, something that can happen if fats or proteins are mixed in or if the compost pile is not properly turned to oxygenate it.

The high school students got involved through Mastroianni's daughter Sasha, who belongs to the environmental action club led by math teacher Geoffery Friedman.

"I don't really know how to do really good composting, so I'm learning a lot," said club member Joel Fogue, an ARHS senior, who was helping to clear brush to make way for a compost bin in back of Crocker Farm on a recent chilly afternoon.

While Fogue, Friedman, Sasha Mastroianni and Kaia Zimmerman wielded clippers against a tangle of thorn bushes, Ricci Mastroianni warmed up some cider for them on a camping stove and arranged plates of muffins and other baked goods provided by the Crocker Farm parents organization. She has applied for a $1,500 grant for materials to build the bin, which, if all goes according to plan, the high school students will build come spring.

"Being the trash provider for the school, I get paid less," joked Guilford Mooring, Amherst's Department of Public Works superintendent, about Mastroianni's efforts. The town hauls the schools trash to the Northampton landfill and pays a trucking company with specially lined trucks to haul the compost material to Martin's farm.

In reality, Mooring thinks composting is a concept whose time has come.

"As prices go up, people are going to start going to the practices of our grandparents," Mooring said. "My grandparents never threw anything out," he added. "The trash can was half-empty most of the time."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.