Bret Harte Elementary Pioneers Organic Waste Recycling in Fight Against Climate Crisis

0
614
Alexander Black and Kreigh Hampel at Bret Harte Elementary. Photo by Ashley Erikson.

One public elementary school in Burbank, Bret Harte, has become a testing ground for an innovative on-site food waste reduction initiative. The pilot program, launched by Recycle Your Food, LLC, explores new methods to rapidly process organic waste at the school level. With the school already engaged in food waste separation and composting, the initiative aims to accelerate waste transformation and minimize landfill contributions.

With California at the forefront of the climate crisis, organic waste is known to be a large contributing factor. Food and yard debris when decomposing in landfills, releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. To combat this, California lawmakers have enacted Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383), aimed at reducing greenhouse gases by diverting organic waste from landfills and mandating residents, businesses and now even schools to recycle organic waste and recover edible food.

In the 2022-2023 school year, Bret Harte launched a new student program called the Eco Kids, organized by principal Martha Walter, and the school’s PTA group. A food separation table was built for the school that allowed students to separate their waste after lunch and nutrition, placing scraps into the appropriate buckets: Trash, Food Waste, Recyclables, and Liquids. The Eco Kids, students in 4th and 5th grade that have a passion for sustainability, volunteered at the table, helping their fellow students learn how to separate properly. The Eco Kids then weighed how much waste was being diverted from the landfill each day, tracking it on a white board in the hall for the entire campus to see.

Bret Harte students separate their food scraps and trash at the waste separation table. Photo by Ashley Erikson.

This school year, Bret Harte has taken waste recycling to a whole other level. At the heart of this program is the ES80 Food Cycler, a high-tech machine capable of dehydrating and reducing organic waste using a 12-to-16-hour cycle. The machine macerates, masticates, and dehydrates food waste, significantly cutting down its weight and volume. The school generates anywhere from 65-130 pounds of food waste per day, and the Food Cycler has achieved a 70% reduction in weight and 80% in volume. 

The program has already demonstrated promising results. Student engagement plays a critical role in the initiative’s success. The machine is so easy to use, the Eco Kids are able to fill it up and start the cycle on their own. Alexander Black from Recycle Your Food, LLC or Mr.Eco as the kids call him on campus, has been at the forefront of the Bret Harte pilot program and comes by every day to check and empty the machine. 

Leftover food from students and the cafeteria are loaded into the machine, the door is locked and sealed, and all it takes is the press of a green button to begin the cycle. By the next morning, what is released is a dry, soil-like material, turning 100 lbs of dense food waste into a 20lb high-nutrient mixture without all the water. Hauling food waste is energy, and requires gas and human capital. The machine cuts down on all of that by reducing weight and volume. “The biggest opportunity is the greenhouse gas emission problem from food waste which happens the minute we’re not eating the food,” says Black. 

Alexander Black fills the machine with food scraps. Photo by Ashley Erikson.

The soil-like mixture the machine produces has no smell, doesn’t lure rodents or pests, and doesn’t require any water to run it. Although the financial feasibility of such programs remains a challenge, the Bret Harte project operates at no cost to the school district, thanks to grant funding that covered $25,000 for the machine and the protective shed. In terms of electricity usage the machine uses between 10-20 kWh, which in Burbank equates to $3-5 a cycle.

Black who collaborates with supermarkets and even larger scale venues to cut down food waste with the machines, is working to find the best usage of the processed material, from creating compost mixtures, animal feed, and distributing it to the farming and gardening communities.  At this point, it can leave Bret Harte in two ways.   The first being in the campus’ green bin that is hauled away by the city and the second is mixing it into the school’s compost bins. 

In the 2018-2019 school year, the PTA implemented a 4 week gardening rotation paid for and run by PTA volunteers.  Each grade learns a different aspect to gardening including gardening basics, garden creatures, edible gardening, native gardening, composting, and waste reduction. For the 4th grade composing lessons, 20 compost bins were brought on campus and have been used not only in the teaching of composting each year, but in the breaking down of lunch food waste on campus.

Kreigh Hampel who served the City of Burbank for 17 years as a Recycling Coordinator, has been volunteering his time at Bret Harte, and helped to launch the compost program with the PTA, helped implement food sorting on campus, and now works with Black on the food recycling program and how the product intertwines with the compost bins. “If the compost is packed down there’s no air in it that’s producing methane. If you filter through an aerated layer, it can break down again, and you’ll get carbon dioxide,” said Hampel on adding the mixture to the compost bins. “You always get that, but methane is a more potent greenhouse gas, so the idea is to drive the chemistry toward just carbon dioxide and not toward methane.”

The soil-like material is removed from the machine after the cycle ends. Photo by Ashley Erikson.

Right now Hampel and Black are learning what qualities work with what composite. “You can put a tablespoon around a plant, scratch it into the soil a little bit and the nutrients are going to release and sink into the root zone with the water,” said Hampel. “If you start dumping piles of this onto the surface it’s going to mold and you’re going to have bacteria because it has meat and dairy in it.”

The broader impact of the initiative extends beyond waste recycling and needs to begin in the first step of reduction. California Education Code Section 49501.5 complicates food waste recovery efforts, as it mandates that public schools provide nutritious meals free of charge to all TK-12 students upon request. This law ensures compliance with federal meal component requirements to maintain USDA funding, making creative food repurposing unfeasible. With federal laws requiring nutritional factors be met, student are provided with a full well-rounded meal versus choosing food that they know they will eat, leaving an abundance of food waste.  Bret Harte has implemented a food share table that works to combat excess waste by allowing students to place unwanted cafeteria food on a table for others to take from.

While Bret Harte is currently the only school in Burbank utilizing the Food Cycler, other schools are implementing organic waste separation and share tables, with additional waste reduction strategies under consideration. The hope is that this pilot program will inform future policies and funding strategies, enabling wider adoption of on-site food waste reduction methods across California’s public schools.

Whether through composting, dehydration, or other innovative approaches, the push to transform food waste into a resource rather than a liability is gaining momentum—one school at a time. For more information on the program visit www.recycleyourfood.com or contact Alexander Black at 626-408-0447.