Through the years the Sprouts of Hope have worked on many sustainability projects in the Cambridge public schools —at King Open, our K-8 school, and now in high school, at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). When we were in elementary school, we went before the school committee to let them know why they should get rid of the cafeteria's polystyrene food trays. After our second time testifying about this problem, the school committee voted for the school district to investigate this problem and that led to us working with school district officials to implement composting in our cafeteria.
Many other individuals and groups have been a part of this same effort to improve sustainability in Cambridge. Meryl Brott, the Recycling Program Manager for the City of Cambridge at the Department of Public Works, helped us to start the compost program at King Open and has championed its movement into other schools. We are so happy to discover that she just received the The Green Hero honor from the Cambridge School District for the months of January/February 2012.
Here's a slideshow Meryl created to show why and how schools set up their composting programs.
Our high school’s environmental action club, which a few of the Sprouts recently joined, is also active in making a positive difference in our school's sustainability. During the last two years our entire high school was rebuilt in a "green way" and will be LEED certified. There are eco-friendly improvements still taking place — by students and teachers —to make what goes on in the high school more energy efficient, eco-friendly and sustainable.
One great thing the school district did was to hire Kristen Von Hoffmann to be its first sustainability coordinator. We've met with Kristen (she's sitting in the middle of us in the photo below) to talk about her initiatives and we want to help her to engage more students in getting involved in supporting her efforts. And she's clearly doing a good job!
According to the Fall 2011 Recycling Summary published by the Cambridge Department of Public Works, the Cambridge Public Schools recycled 82.8 tons (165,648 pounds) of waste during the first semester of school. In fact, in December 2011 alone, 41,062 pounds of waste were recycled. On average, that is around 7.5 pounds per student! Most schools are even taking part in a recycling competition to see which school can recycle the most waste.
Recycling is clearly a main focus of sustainability in the Cambridge Public Schools, but progress with composting is happening, too, thanks to Meryl's efforts. Cambridgeport, a K-8 school in our district, recently began composting and our high school begins composting in April. When that happens, five of the district's schools will be doing school-wide composting in their cafeterias!
Water is another focus of improving sustainability. In the high school's cafeteria, we have new water dispensers where students fill up their reusable water bottles for free instead of buying bottled water. In fact, our cafeteria no longer offers bottled water! Additionally, CRLS is trying to reduce its carbon footprint. Take a look at how we are partnering with NSTARto try to save energy in our school:
It makes us so happy to know that so many people are working on the issue of sustainability in our schools. We hope a lot of students will get involved and help. If you want to find out what you can do, then email Kristen Von Hoffmann, the Cambridge Sustainability Coordinator, at Kvonhoffmann@cpsd.us.
The Sprouts of Hope had the opportunity to meet with the Cambridge Public School’s new Sustainability Coordinator, Kristen von Hoffman. She has a lot of experience with environmental issues; before she took this job, she was the founder of Greenfox schools, a nonprofit organization that works to make schools green and sustainable.
One of the things that Kristen does is work with Meryl Brott to expand composting in the schools!
Meryl helped King Open to start a pilot composting program and now she and Kristen are working with other schools to make composting part of what kids do with food waste. The city’s Department of Public Works, where Meryl works, put together a manual with Frequently Asked Questions that explains how to set up composting in a school cafeteria —and we hope all of the schools in Cambridge will be doing this soon.
So far, King Open, the 9th Grade Campus, and the Graham & Parks schools are composting their cafeteria leftovers. From September to February, these schools have composted more than 14,500 pounds and saved more than 14,500 lbs of CO2, according to Meryl and Kristen. That's equal to the weight of 1.75 elephants.
Kristen is now working to create and implement a sustainability plan for the school district. The five main categories she uses to look at the whole picture of the sustainability in the schools are energy, waste, food, products, and green space. She devised a report that outlines the major goals and she named the program, Cambridge Green Schools Initiative (CGSI).
She wanted to hear our ideas as she works to create a CGSI website. Here are a few we came up with:
Including sustainability projects in community service hours
Raffles
Having kids take a sustainability pledge
Including links to a group page
Anything else to engage the community.
We even started think of more acronyms for the five parts of sustainability — energy, waste, food, products and green space — and by the time Kristen left we had sketched a possible logo that she took home with her.
During the meeting we also discussed the importance of biodiversity, reforestation and, of course, sustainability. Population is increasing, so sustainability is vital. We all can and we all need to make a difference.
Kristen also told us about geo-engineering. Geo-engineering is about the way we look at changing the world while keeping in mind the big picture. Sustainability is one of the components involved with engineering the earth. A main focus is eliminating the effects of climate change. She told us about some of the earth-saving inventions, such as panels that deflect sunlight and how it ultimately deflects heat; naval ships that can do chemical reactions for climate change; and man-made trees that suck in carbon dioxide and transfer it into hydrogen.
We definitely learned a lot from the meeting and we are hope to have a chance to follow up on all the ideas we discussed to launch a great website for CGSI.
This May, after a long, tiring Roots & Shoots-filled spring, the Sprouts of Hope participated in yet another exciting event with Dr. Jane Goodall -- an event that took place at our school!
Dr. Jane Goodall came to King Open, the Sprouts of Hope greeted her outside and showed her the murals the King Open community has painted. (You can see Risa with Dr. Jane in this photograph.) One of them is about immigrants who've come to Cambridge; the two other ones are at our school’s entrance. One is a replica of the Sistine Chapel, but with people from King Open painted on it, and the other shows Dr. Martin Luther King, with our school's name on it, too.
Then Dr. Jane went into the auditorium, where she greeted students with a pant hoot. Kids responded and it seemed like they were having a lot of fun.
She came to our school to congratulate us on a very successful year of composting. King Open’s composting program, which the Sprouts of Hope helped to start a little over a year ago, has saved more than 13,000 pounds of food waste that otherwise would’ve been dumped into a landfill!
Dr. Jane not only congratulated students at King Open for saving the planet, but she also came to our school to spread the word about composting. At the whole-school assembly where she spoke, she encouraged other schools to start composting – and since the mayor of Cambridge, the superintendent of schools, and some school committee members were at the assembly, we are hoping that her message (and ours!) will make a difference.
At the assembly, Dr. Jane spoke a little bit about her life, as well as the Jane Goodall Institute, Tacare, and Roots & Shoots. She encouraged students to get involved. Her message to us was that simple things – like composting our school lunches – make a difference. As she always says: “Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference!”
Four students – ranging from kindergarden to fourth grade – demonstrated for Dr. Jane how composting works in our cafeteria. It was a fun to watch, even though the kids got in the wrong order and some compost went in the trash!
Our science teacher, Donna Peruzzi, led the Q & A with Jane Goodall. Microphones were passed through the crowd and kids asked questions such as “What do chimpanzees eat?"
It was really special to have Dr. Jane come to King Open. Here is what Anne Driscoll wrote about her visit to our school in Tonic.com:
"The five girls who belong to Sprouts of Hope Roots & Shoots group had lobbied the Cambridge School Committee and the school superintendent to create a conservation plan and install special composting bins in the King Open School cafeteria. The group hopes to expand the program and replicate it at other schools.
In addition to the six and a half tons of garbage saved from a landfill, their composting program also prevented the release of additional methane gas, which becomes 70 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a green house gas. Besides, Goodall says it's the small efforts now that pay off big dividends later.
"You can't expect a child to suddenly become involved in everything," Goodall was quoted as telling the King Open students. "You have to start somewhere."
We gave Dr. Jane a King Open shirt. We hope she remembers her visit at our school as much as we remember having her with us that day. It meant so much to us that she took time from her busy schedule to come to King Open and congratulate us on our efforts to compost.
To read more about Dr. Jane's visit to our school, you can click on these links:
On May 1, the Sprouts of Hope attended a very special event, which took place at the Roger Williams Park Zoo, in Providence, Rhode Island. Along with 12 other Roots & Shoots groups from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine, we had an amazing opportunity to spend the day with Dr. Jane Goodall. Yes, it was extremely exciting. Although we had already met her a few times in the past, we were still ecstatic. After all, it was Jane Goodall!
We began our Saturday very early, driving from Cambridge, MA to the zoo at 8:00 AM! When we arrived at the zoo, we headed for the Roots & Shoots tent, where each of the groups had its own table to show others the project they are working on. Some groups were learning more about endangered whales, specifically the Right Whale; others have been doing fundraisers to raise money for different causes related to helping animals or people or the environment, which are the three goals of Roots & Shoots. We came up with nicknames for a few of the groups; The Whale Group 1, The Whale Group 2 and GGOD, which stood for “Go Green Or Die.”
The project we exhibited was not about whales, homeless shelters, or parrots in Guyana. Instead, it was about a book we wrote called “Energy Lite” that describes why and howfamilies – parents and kids – can use Kill A Watt meters in their homes to learn about ways to conserve energy use and pay less for energy bills. We came up with some fun experiments that parents and kids can do together. To demonstrate some of them, at our table we had hairdryer plugged into a Kill A Watt meter as well as a toaster oven.
In the toaster oven, we baked chocolate chip cookies, which lured people to our table with the delicious smell of baking cookies. And when they got there we’d show them how much energy these appliances use! They were always amazed, and a lot of them told us they would let their hair dry without using a hairdryer – now that they knew how much energy it uses.
Many people were very amazed at what we had done in writing this book, and they congratulated us on our accomplishments. We also explained about our book – along with a Kill A Watt – will be available soon in all of the Cambridge Public Libraries so that people can take the book and the meter home, just like they’d check out a book or a CD.
When people told us that enjoyed our project, we gave them one of the Sprouts of
Hope business cards that I designed. It has our blog’s Web address on it, so we are hoping more people will come to read what we write about what the Sprouts of Hope do. Some people even wanted to know if our books were on sale. Unfortunately, they’re not, at this time, but we hope to sell them in the future!
Each Roots & Shoots group got a chance to go on the stage and present their projects to Dr. Jane, as she tells us to call her. She sat in the front row and really enjoyed learning about what we are doing to change the world. Eliza spoke about our “Energy Lite” book project, as the rest of the Sprouts went up on stage to help show big photographs of pages from our book.
We are so grateful to Dr. Jane for writing her words of encouragement and support about our project, and now her words are on our book’s back cover. It was amazing for us read what she said about our effort: “The Sprouts of Hope have come up with such a simple idea that can make such a very big difference.”
After our presentation, we handed a copy of “Energy Lite” to Dr. Jane that each of us had signed – as its authors.
During the rest of the day we explained our project again and again to people. First to Roots & Shoots people, then to the public, who came by our table on the way to getting Dr. Jane to sign one of her books that they’d purchased.
Dr. Jane signed a copy of her new book, "Hope for Animals and Their World," for each of
us, and here is the message she wrote for us:
“Follow your dream. Jane Goodall.”
Dr. Jane must have been much more exhausted than we were! She continued to sign books until 7:00 that night—and she had started at about 2:00 in the afternoon! Wow!
We all had a very fun time at the zoo. It was great fun to meet Dr. Jane (again!), to look at all the adorable animals, and to spread our knowledge of Kill A Watt meters to others! This day was truly one of the best Roots & Shoots events we have attended. With all the excitement, teaching and demonstrating, how could we not love it?
A Leadership Summit with Dr. Jane
By Lilly
On Sunday, May 2, an invited group of New England Roots & Shoots members gathered at the Lenox Hotel in Boston – an environmentally friendly hotel – for a Leadership Summit with Dr. Jane Goodall. Dr. Jane told us a bit about the history of Roots & Shoots, including that next year will be its 20-year anniversary. She also had encouraging words for us as she spoke about how Roots & Shoots is affecting young people everywhere.
Dr. Jane told us that she has often run into young people who feel hopeless, as though there is nothing they can do to make things better for animals and people and the environment. She believes that Roots & Shoots is spreading hope and enthusiasm – and she described us as being “ambassadors” for Roots & Shoots, as we spread the word through what we do about the ways that kids are truly making a positive difference and bringing about change – sometimes in ways that then spur adults to act.
All of us sat in a big circle and we talked for a long time about local issues and global change.
Some Roots & Shoots members talked about the apathy they see on their campus and about the lack of knowledge a lot of their peers have when it comes to environmental issues. Others talked about situations involving violence and what they are doing to try to stop it.
We also discussed ideas for an upcoming global Roots & Shoots campaign that will focus on endangered species and climate change. Roots & Shoots members suggested ways to reach out to people in their community and get them interested in learning more about how these topics are connected. We exchanged some interesting comments about “cute” and “not cute” animals that are being affect ed by climate change, and how these animals can be used as part of the campaign.
Our discussion ended with a look back and a look forward. Stories of success were shared and next steps were talked about. It was really inspiring to hear all the things these people have done to make the world a better place. One group told about their success creating a Roots & Shoots group in a low-income area with a lot of violence. We shared our success with getting a pilot composting program into our school – and our work ahead to convince other schools to do composting in their cafeterias.
One of the Roots & Shoots displays at this event was also about composting; kids at the Cotting School -- with whom the Harvard Roots & Shoots group is involved -- brought samples from different stages of the composting process to show how it actually happens.
We had a chance to ask Dr. Jane questions about her work, and a lot of
kids told her about the ways she had inspired them. It was amazing to see how much Dr. Jane has taught us all and to think about how we have all changed by being in Roots & Shoots.
Spreading the Word About Roots & Shoots
By Risa
On Monday night., May 3, Eliza, Maya, Kaya and I participated in an event at the Currier House at Harvard University.It was an opportunity for those who have supported Roots & Shoots to visit with Dr. Jane. We were invited to show these guests our project and to share with them how Roots and Shoots has a positive impact on our lives.
We set up an exhibit on a table with the book we wrote – “Energy Lite,” posters with big photos of pages from our book and a Kill A Watt meter. People seemed to be genuinely interested in our project, and we were delighted to share with them what we’ve accomplished.
Everyone sat down to hear Dr. Jane Goodall speak. She talked about the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) and Roots & Shoots. She spoke about her experiences starting various programs, working with kids, and of course about the chimps she studied for so many years in Africa! After Dr. Jane spoke, Eliza and I told the people about our experiences in Roots & Shoots.
Following Dr. Jane wasn’t easy, but we tried. We shared an overview of what we’ve accomplished over the years, and talked more specifically about our most recent project “Energy Lite.” We also spoke about how Roots & Shoots has motivated and encouraged us to do projects like this in our local community and at our school.
Without Roots & Shoots, The Sprouts of Hope would not have been formed and we would not have been able to make a difference as we have. Our motto is "Have a Dream. Make a Difference," and without Roots & Shoots, we might not have acted on our dreams.
An Evening at Harvard with Dr. Jane Goodall
By Maya
On May 3, after our event at Harvard’s Currier House, the Sprouts of Hope traveled to Harvard’s Sanders Theater for another event with Dr. Jane. It began, her events usually do, with a very long applause from the audience, followed by a pant-hoot, which is the sound that chimpanzees make when they are excited. We’ve learned how to do it from Dr. Jane, whose pant-hoot is simply amazing to hear.
We listened as Dr. Jane and Harvard Professor Richard Wrangham, who worked for three years with Dr. Jane in Gombe, talk about what she’d learned about chimpanzees. It was 50 years ago that Dr. Jane arrived for the first time on the shores of Lake Tanganhika to begin her research on chimpanzees. We learned about the project called Takari, which means “take care,” and what it was doing to help the wild animals in the forest and the people in the nearby communities. We heard many inspiring stories from Dr. Jane about her experiences in Gombe.
We also heard the story of Mr. H, who of course spent the night sitting on the table besides Dr. Jane.
After their conversation and questions from the audience, Sally Sharp Lehman introduced the Sprouts of Hope and asked us to come to the stage. I gave short talk about what the Sprouts are doing and told the audience about our book project, “Energy Lite.” Here is some of what I said:
"Thank you, Dr. Jane, for giving us the confidence to believe that what we do can make a difference. We now know we can. And like those ROOTS that push rocks aside to become SHOOTS, we now know that nothing is impossible to accomplish."
Our friend, Abby Schoenberg, who is a member of the Harvard Roots & Shoots group, also gave a great speech about their projects and her love since childhood for Dr. Jane and Roots & Shoots.
Although the Sprouts have had the amazing opportunity to meet Dr. Jane in the past, I think that each time is more special then the last. This was a very wonderful and inspiring night. As we left Sanders Theater many people who we didn’t know came up to us to say congratulations. Later, I heard that Dr. Jane and Professor Wrangham spent the rest of the night signing their books!
My Bat Mitzvah is in March. For my community service project, my Sprouts of Hope sisters and I are putting the idea behind Roots & Shoots/New England’s Sprouts of Hope fund into action! The Sprouts Of Hope Fund offers a way for people to donate money to help start Roots & Shoots’ groups in low-income and poor schools and communities. As the Sprouts of Hope, we contribute each year from our fundraising activities. [If you want to donate, check out The Sprouts of Hope Fund section on the right side of our blog. We did a cool video to tell why we think it’s such a great way to help other kids, and we put it on YouTube. Click on the link to take a look and listen.]
With my bat mitzvah project, however, we are helping to start a group in a different way. At a bilingual school in Cambridge, MA called Amigos a group of second graders recently joined Roots & Shoots. They named themselves after us - "Brotes de Esperanza," which is Spanish for "Sprouts of Hope." One day each month, I and two other members of The Sprouts of Hope volunteer by doing fun projects with the Brotes. We plan and lead their lessons and projects with the help of a Roots & Shoots intern and a parent of one of the Brotes.
The first time we went to Amigos was on a Wednesday in late October. We helped the Brotes make collages about the environment and then made Halloween decorations and toys out of recycled materials. We talked a little bit about global warming and how to have a "Green Halloween," since they were going to dress up the next week as either a princess or a ninja.
Then we discussed Waste-Free lunches. We'd brought in the many posters, photos, lunch trays, water bottles, and utensils that we collected and saved from our Waste-Free lunch project at our school.
We also introduced them to what we call the 6 R's (rethink, renew, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot) and explained to them why waste-free lunches are good for the environment. We passed around water bottles, trays, containers, and utensils, some of which were reusable and some of which weren't.
They got really excited when we talked about reusable lunch boxes and they all jumped up and ran to get their lunch boxes. They were also very excited about sorting through the photographs we brought that showed different ways of packaging food. Using the photos as illustrations, we debated whether a six-pack of small soda cans was better or worse for the environment than drinking soda from one bigger bottle. The kids were very smart and knew a lot about waste-free lunches and the environment. One kid even had a solar panel on her roof at home!
The next month we went there, the kids celebrated autumn by making recycled bookmarks out of leaves. Also, in honor of Thanksgiving, they all wrote something that they were thankful for on a leaf and then they strung their leaves on a homemade paper tree. During that visit we talked with them about composting and discussed why it is good for the environment. (Since we do composting at our school and have visited the composting farm where our food waste is taken, we had a lot of stories to share with them.)
We let them touch some real compost with worms in it! They loved the worms especially. They colored in posters that we designed for an event we did in October, the City Sprouts festival, where we celebrated our school gardens. The posters said in big bubble letters "WE WANT COMPOST AT OUR SCHOOL!" They colored in the posters and planned to hang them up in the halls of their school so they could convince their principal, teachers and students to get composting going in their cafeteria.
We have done so many fun projects with the Brotes. One month, we taught them about bottled water. We introduced them to Think Outside The Bottle, the international anti-bottled water campaign. We also let them do a blind taste test between bottled and tap water.
A different month, we talked about homelessness. The Brotes all brought socks to their meeting to donate to our sock drive to benefit Boston Health Care for the Homeless (www.bhchp.org).
Among other things, the Brotes have learned about endangered species and watersheds.
One month, when we focused on recycling, we even got to make recycled paper with them (out of old newspapers)! It was really fun!
So far, working with the Brotes has been fun and educational for the Sprouts. The Brotes are very smart. They know more about global warming and the environment than a lot of adults. I hope that our partnership with the Brotes will continue, even though my Bat Mitzvah will soon be over. It's been fun and amazing to share our Roots & Shoots experiences with these kids -- taking what we've learned and passing it down to them: from Sprouts to Brotes.
My Uncle Ben teaches a college class at Lesley University about teaching. In mid-November, he asked me to come speak about the environmental activities I have participated in throughout my life so his students could learn about how kids get involved with environmental issues. This was not a Sprouts of Hope event, but many of the things I talked about had to do with the Sprouts.
While a lot of what the Sprouts do is related to the environment, sometimes we do projects that help other people -- like when we went to a Mission Hill School as part of a Roots & Shoots service project on Martin Luther King, Jr. day earlier this year. There we spent time cleaning a classroom, as you can see in this photo.
At Lesley, my uncle's class was small, but the students had lots of questions. They wanted to know how I got interested in doing these kinds of activities and hear about the recent projects I have done, and many other things. I told them about our Kill-A-Watt project -- which is a book the Sprouts are creating to help kids and their parents use a Kill-A-Watt meter to find out how to save energy in their homes. We are planning on putting our book and a Kill-A-Watt meter together in packets and donating them to the Cambridge Public Library. Then, families can borrow this kit just like they borrow books.
You can see some of the drawings we are thinking about using on this book's cover.
I also told this class about the 2nd grade Roots & Shoots group we are helping at another Cambridge public school. And I let them know about how the Sprouts were involved with getting the composting program started at our school. And we are trying to get other schools in Cambridge interested in doing composting in their cafeterias.
I came away from this event realizing how much we have all done in the past few years! It made me feel really good about myself and our group and all the work we have done.
On Saturday, October 3rd, the Sprouts of Hope participated in the City Sprouts School Garden Celebration. The event was a little slow starting because it was raining so hard, and all of the exhibits had to be set up inside instead of outside as we’d hoped. Once the celebration got going, it was a lot fun. We were asked to represent our school, King Open, which last year became the first school in Cambridge to do school-wide composting in the cafeteria as a part of the Department of Public Works’ Food to Flowers program. So we designed activities for kids that would educate them about composting, in general and at our school.
One activity gave kids the chance to sort what can and can't be composted. We had three colored baskets, and each of us had drawn two things – either food or utensils or other things related to eating – and we’d laminated them so kids could decide which basket to put them in. The baskets were labeled as what can be composted at home, what can be composted at school, and what can't be composted. The point of the activity was to help the kids understand what can be composted in different situations.
We also created a big bubble-lettered page for kids to color. It said:
We wantcomposting atourschool.
We're hoping they take these colorful posters to their schools and put them on the walls so that everyone there starts thinking about wanting to have composting happen at their school. The kids really enjoyed coloring, and they – and their parents – seemed enthusiastic about the idea of composting. Dr. Jeffrey Young, who is the Superintendent of the Cambridge Public Schools, stopped by at our table. We sent him an invitation so we were really glad he decided to come. Since he’s in his first year in Cambridge, we told him in our invitation about how the Sprouts of Hope had testified at the school committee about replacing polystyrene trays because they are bad for the environment. And we let him know how talking about the trays then led to our school, King Open, becoming the pilot program for composting in school cafeterias in Cambridge. He seemed to like the idea of composting at schools in Cambridge and was glad to hear that we were making it work so well in King Open.
At one point Fred Fantini, who is a member of the Cambridge School Committee and one of the people who supports our effort to make the school cafeterias more eco-friendly, stopped by to our table. And some of the Sprouts had their picture taken with him and with Christine Ellersick, who works at the New England Roots & Shoots organization and is always ready to help us.
We also showed the kids and parents who came to visit our table where the food waste from our school's cafeteria goes to be turned into compost.
Even though it rained and we had to be inside, the City Sprouts celebration was lots of fun and we hope we convinced a lot of kids – and parents – in Cambridge to want to start doing composting at their school. For kids at King Open, it’s now just part of what we do. And that’s cool because we’re helping the earth by using our food waste to make really good soil with the things we might otherwise throw away.
Seeing How Composting Works -- Up Close and Personal
By Eliza
On a weekday afternoon in September, the Sprouts of Hope went on an exciting but smelly field trip. We travelled by car to visit the compost farm where our school's food waste goes after we sort it into barrels in our cafeteria. Meryl Brott, who works in recycling at the Department of Public Works in Cambridge and helped us get our composting program going at King Open, arranged our visit and came with us to the farm.
The compost farm is located in Hamilton, Massachusetts, which is northeast of Cambridge, and it has been running for more than 20 years. The farmer, Nate, was kind enough to give us a very detailed and informative tour of the compost farm.
Here is something new that we learned on our visit:
15 years ago, this compost farm produced 60 cubic yards of compost a year. Now, it produces 25,000 each year. We figured out that means that in 15 years there has been a 415.66 percent increase in how many cubic yards of compost are created per year!
At the farm, they use bulldozers to mix around the compost. They have a big workshop where they keep all of their diggers and materials. There are huge piles of compost outside, but there are also huge buildings filled with indoor compost. One building was entirely filled with a kind of compost called “enhanced loam,” which is a compost/topsoil mix used to grow grass. Its quality is so high that it costs $30 per cubic yard, which is really expensive! Another type of compost that the farm makes is a mixture good for gardening that they call Sweet Peet. Sweet Peet is a composted, aged horse manure similar to mulch.
We drove out in the farmer’s truck to the back part of the farm where a lot of the composting takes place. Most of the compost piles are set in windrows, which are long rows of compost that provide more air and oxygen so that the composting happens faster and the piles are less likely to catch on fire.
Nate carried a huge and very long thermometer with him and every once in a while he’d stick it in one of the piles and show us the heat being generated from the compost pile. Often the thermometer would tell us that on the inside of the pile the temperature was pretty high. [This photo shows the thermometer when it first was put into the pile, and then we'd watch the needle move as the temperature got hotter.] It’s the heat and energy generated by the composting that helps to move the process along. Sometimes we'd see steam coming out of the piles.
The compost farm staff constantly use big machines and diggers to flip the windrows. There are four or five of them next to each other, with space in between to make the flipping easier. These piles take four to five months to fully turn into nutrient rich dirt. Once the compost makes it through its last windrow, it goes into this huge green machine that does the final processing. From there, it heads up, up, up, until it gets tossed out on to the top of the pile that is the final product.
We also found some items -- a plastic shoe and a noncompostable fork -- that should not have been put into the compost stream in the first place.
The most important thing we learned, though, is how important it is to compost whatever can be composted. Before the trip, we didn't know that it costs half as much money in the long run to compost food and yard waste than to send this waste to a landfill where they will rot the “wrong” way. People are paying a lot of money to throw food and yard waste (since these are the two largest types of waste that could be composted) into landfills when they could be saving nearly twice as much money by composting them. This would turn their waste into something useful, produce really good dirt that others can use to grow things, and help to save the earth.
Outstanding Roots & Shoots Group in New England, 2009 and 2008, 2010 Award for Most Active Roots & Shoots Group
The Sprouts of Hope: Who Are We?
We are the Sprouts of Hope, a Cambridge (MA)-based Roots and Shoots group, part of a youth-focused organization founded by Jane Goodall. (www.rootsandshoots.org) We get involved with environmental issues in our school and community. On this blog, we describe our activites and share what we learn from our experiences. We hope you will add to our blog with your comments about what you are doing in your community and offer us feedback and ideas about our projects. We want to learn from you as you learn from us. Risa, Lilly, Eliza, Maya, Kaya.
If you want to contact us, please send an e-mail to Melissa at melissa.ludtke@gmail.com
The Sprouts of Hope Fund
To give ALLkids a chance to experience Roots and Shoots, we donated money we raised in a yardsale we organized in May 2008. With our contribution, the New England chapter started this fund to help pay the membership fee ($50.00 per year) and provide other support to families and kids who want to start a Roots & Shoots group but don't have the necessary funds. Since the fall of 2008, there have been 17 Roots & Shoots groups created with the help of this fund.
We hope you'll donate to The Sprouts of Hope Fund. Here is a way to do so on the Web:
http://tinyurl.com/mly2b3
Or you can specify this fund and send your donation to:
Roots & Shoots New England 89 South Street LL Boston, MA 02111 617-439-9090
We wrote these words when we made our donation:
“We think that Roots & Shoots is an amazing program that enables kids all over the world to make a difference and help make the world a better place. As part of our group’s personal effort to help make the world a better place, we would like to make a contribution…so that other kids will be able to join Roots & Shoots too. Thank you for inspiring so many people, including us, to make a difference.” Risa, Lilly, Eliza, Maya, and Kaya The Sprouts of Hope
Sprouts of Hope: GoGreen Recognition
May 2008: Cambridge honors green businesses
Children belonging to Sprouts of Hope, which is part of the worldwide Roots & Shoots program founded by Dr. Jane Goodall, were also recognized at the annual GoGreen Awards ceremony held at the Cambridge City Hall annex. They went before the Cambridge School Committee last October to request that the schools stop using polystyrene lunch trays, sparking an ongoing investigation into alternatives. The Sprouts organized a waste-free lunch day in the schools as well. (Cambridge Chronicle and Cambridge Tab: 5/27/2008)
Information about the GoGreen Awards can be found here:
