GSS relies on service fees from school contracts and third-party grant funding to support the educational program that accompanies the introduction of expanded services at new schools. GSS continues to roll out its programming using a pyramid model, initiating the program at elementary schools within each community (Boulder, Lafayette, Louisville and Superior), then moving into “feeder” middle schools, and finally high schools.

With the introduction of additional services, Eco-Cycle provides education about the history of agriculture in BVSD, the shift to modern day farming, and the role that waste diversion and composting plays in the local food system. The GSS program also collaborates with students and teachers to host hands-on learning sessions to create posters for recycling and composting based on what they are actually seeing in their waste stream. Eco-Cycle estimates that “by implementing the Green Star Schools program, another one-third of waste is diverted due to increased recycling and the collection of organic materials. The overall average rate of diversion for the Green Star Schools is two-thirds.”

However, while some BVSD schools have access to robust recycling and composting services, the geographic range creates some complications for providing the same services across all communities. Eco-Cycle currently does not serve Broomfield, Erie, and Nederland, where BVSD has eight schools. BVSD is able to contract with trash hauler Western Disposal to also provide recycling services at those schools, however they do not benefit from composting. With Food Services’ prioritization to reduce the amount of food ending up in the landfill, this is an area for improvement within the district.

Food Waste Club’s Video

To promote food waste awareness, student members of the club prepared a video about food waste and being proactive in the lunchroom. The video served as a tool for student engagement and education across different sites.

The Food Waste Club started their project by collecting data. To begin, they sent out a survey to other students at Douglass Elementary to gauge which foods students did or did not like, as well as their thoughts on portion size, hot versus cold lunches, how hungry they were at lunchtime, and noise level in the cafeteria. The team then conducted a waste audit, weighing discarded food from the cafeteria to see how much food their school was wasting and discovered that many students were throwing away untouched fruits and vegetables.

In response, the Food Waste Club created an “untouched food bin,” where students place uneaten fruits and vegetables to be washed and used in future lunches. The data was also used to educate students and families to increase their awareness of food waste and to promote the idea of “take what you want and eat what you take” in the school cafeteria. To further promote food waste awareness, members of the Food Waste Club prepared a video about food waste and being proactive in the lunchroom, which was shared with other classes and put on the Douglass Elementary website.

Thanks to a grant from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in spring 2019, BVSD schools were invited to participate in the first-ever district-wide food waste audit program to collect data and implement ways to help reduce food waste at schools and throughout the district. BVSD and eight other communities across the country collected data about the amount of food thrown out in school cafeterias.

Students learned about the ways in which food waste impacts the environment by recording data from the student food waste audit during their lunch period. The audit engaged basic science and math skills to:

Participating students will ultimately understand how to reduce food waste and why reducing food waste is important to conserving natural resources and wildlife habitat. Backed by data and observations, the Food Waste Warrior teams designed communication campaigns and implemented new school-based strategies to further reduce waste in their schools. View the final WWF Food Waste Warriors report here.

Building off the Food Waste Warriors program, BVSD developed an expanded toolkit with presentations and resources for talking to teachers, students, food service professionals, and parents and other community members about food waste reduction. In collaboration with Leanpath, and with support from a University of Colorado Technical Communications & Design class, BVSD Food Services now maintains a toolkit of supplies to conduct food waste audits, as well as dataset from the district’s Leanpath tracking systems, and ideas for interdisciplinary study and engagement by all grade levels.