It’s lunchtime at San Marcos Elementary School in California. When students finish eating, they carefully sort their trash. Half-eaten apples go into a special container for food scraps. Empty milk cartons go into the recycling bin. And chip bags and granola bar wrappers get tossed into the regular trash.
It’s part of a program started last year by teacher Melissa Cuevas’s fifth-grade class. They set up a sorting station in the cafeteria with separate bins for compost, recyclables, and regular garbage. The food in the compost bin will eventually be turned into a natural fertilizer that helps plants grow. The students have already saved thousands of pounds of food and recyclables from ending up in landfills.