Closing the Food Loop at School: An On-Site School Composting Guide

Why do students throw away perfectly good food? One California waste generation study showed that students generate 37.3 pounds of organic waste per year, making it almost half of the total waste generated at a school (California Department of Resources 2014). There are countless more recent studies, but one thing is clear; the United States has a school food waste issue. Food waste leads to increased waste disposal costs and wasted food budget funds, not to mention the environmental costs of sending food to sit in a landfill. This Guide is in its third edition (1997, 2006, 2019) and continues to help schools implement their own on-site school composting programs.