TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Three years ago, Katharine Bowers helped establish a composting and food waste reduction program at Birchwood Middle School in North Providence, where she teaches. The program enables students to understand things like food decomposition, energy production and recycling. It’s been so successful that the Rhode Island Environmental Association has recognized Bowers as its 2024 Teacher of the Year. She joins me now to talk more about this prestigious honor and how she’s making this work. Katharine, I really appreciate the time. Thank you so much.
Katharine Bowers: Thank you for having me.
Hernandez: And congratulations, by the way.
Bowers: Thank you so much.
Hernandez: How did you find out about the award?
Bowers: It was through our partners Jim Corwin and Warren Hayman through the Rhode Island Recycling Project Club. They had let me know and congratulated me and I actually, I think, had missed the formal email so I was informally told by those two, so I was really surprised to receive the award. It’s extremely humbling. I was not even aware that this award was out there. This wasn’t something that was even on my radar.
Hernandez: I think about this program and I think this is so cool. We never had anything like this when I was coming up in school. Tell us how this composting and food waste production program got started. Where did the idea come from and how’d you pitch it?
Bowers: I was approached by Jim Corwin, like I said, from the Rhode Island Recycling Project. He came to me and said, would you and your school be willing to pilot this program where we are having your students sort their waste in the cafeteria? He showed us kind of how it would work, how we set up our bins and how to train the students on how to do this. I said I think I can make this work and I can incorporate it into my curriculum and we could make a go of it.
Hernandez: You’re showing the kids and getting the kids to take waste and how we can remove it from the landfills and do this really properly. How does this work? Take me from the beginning. What are they doing exactly?
Bowers: So it starts off really simply where the kids are coming up with their cafeteria trays or their lunch boxes, whatever they’re done with. They put it in different bins. So they’ll start first in the beginning with, if they have something that they haven’t eaten that they could share, they’ll put it on what we call our share table. Students who maybe forgot a snack or feeling extra hungry or for whatever their reasons that they did not have a snack that day, they can feel free to come take. They don’t even really have to ask. So if they’re feeling embarrassed, they can just grab it and no one knows the wiser. They will recycle bottles, cans, milk cartons. Then we do have, of course, a regular landfill that will take any plastic or wrappers, those will go there. Then the new bin is our compost bin, which will take all of the students’ napkins and any food waste. So we’re talking apple cores, banana peels, uneaten sandwiches. They’ll take pretty much anything as long as there’s no plastic or metals. And then we do have another place where the students will stack their trays so that we can reduce the amount of space they’re taking up in the bags so the kids know to stack them neatly.
Hernandez: By the way, for the compost, is this a machine of some type or how is the composting being done?
Bowers: In the cafeteria, they’re just collecting it in a bin. Then we work with Bootstrap Compost, which will come and pick up our compost bins twice a week. Then they will turn it into compost. And then the nice piece again is that we’ve worked out a relationship with Bootstrap and with some other composting companies where they will, in the spring, because we at Birchwood have a school garden, they will bring us back compost.
Hernandez: I want to ask you about that. I want to ask about this garden. Okay, so now the kids are learning how to separate their foods and the waste and everything else. And then you said they’re actually even learning math from this. You’re using this in math. How?
Bowers: Yeah, absolutely. So once a month, we’ll go down to the cafeteria and the students will weigh all of the bins and they’re able to make an average of how much we’ve collected for that month based off of that particular day because it’s pretty consistent. Then the students will go back to the classroom. We’ll get out our calculators, we’ll pull out our Chromebooks, and we’ll start working on what percentage of our waste is the compost or the recycling. So they’ll figure that out. And then we’re able to figure out how much food waste per student we have – which we’ve been fortunate that with the program we’ve been reducing, which has been phenomenal –we’ll figure out how much we’re sending per year based off of what we’ve calculated for the month. We’ve been provided with the calculations for how to figure out how much carbon dioxide we’ve prevented from going into the atmosphere.
Hernandez: Look, I’d imagine just as an adult, if I knew what that was for me, I’d be surprised and probably disappointed. But how did the kids react when they learned how much food, again, they were wasting or how much compost they’re creating or the impact they’re having?
Bowers: Honestly, they’re pretty excited. Just like with adults, we take it for granted how we just get rid of our waste. It’s gone. But in the beginning of our school year, we talk about the impacts of food waste, and that they do figure out that the majority of the waste that we’re sending or were sending to our landfill was food waste. Because it’s decomposing in the landfill, it’s unfortunately emitting gases, greenhouse gases, that are contributing to climate change. And so when we look at it, something like that, the kids are like, “This is something that I can’t contribute to. I’m a middle school student.” But this really brings it home, saying, “Look guys, we can make a difference just here at Birchwood.” So they’re able to, by looking at the tonnage that we’ve prevented from sending to the landfill and then working these calculations, they’re really surprised to see, wow, we’ve made an impact just in a month or in a year.
Hernandez: All right, you have a garden. Is it a garden? Is it a greenhouse?
Bowers: We have both.
Hernandez: Okay, so where did this idea come from? I’ve heard about this before in a few other places. How did you bring this about?
Bowers: So, quite a few years ago, this was pre-pandemic, the STEAM class was brought to me and asked would I start this program and make it kind of an environmental focus with agriculture, botany, that kind of thing, and make something of the school garden. We had one. It just needed a little TLC. So we based the class around being able to grow stuff. The challenge that we had was we live in New England and our growing season is pretty short. So with the help of the former principal Melissa Goho, we co-wrote a grant to get a greenhouse. We have student work tables out there as well as growing tables. We have a full irrigation system. We do get the kids to harvest in the fall, but the reason for the greenhouse was so that they can see the fruits of their labor, so that they can see it from the beginning of its life cycle till they get the final product.
Hernandez: This is so fascinating. What else are you thinking about, considering this honor that you’ve received and everything you’ve accomplished and, again, what we’re helping the kids learn? What else is on your mind?
Bowers: To be able to impact and reach as many kids as possible is my goal, whether that’s within Birchwood Middle School or beyond. I would love to spread this, to be able to keep it going because we are making some changes here in our little school and also in our little state – environmental impacts.
Hernandez: Congratulations again on this. This is fantastic for you and this is such an awesome program. I wish I had this when I was coming up as a kid.
Bowers: Thank you so much. Well, visit us anytime. We’re happy to have you.
Hernandez: Again, I’ve been speaking with Birchwood Middle School teacher Katharine Bowers, named Environmental Teacher of the Year by the Rhode Island Environmental Association. Again, Katharine, thanks so much.
Bowers: Thanks so much.
