Wayland Green Team Invites Help with Composting Project

The text below was submitted by Green Team members Katt Vander Straeten and Molly Faulkner.

Over the last two years, the Wayland Green Team has worked hard to improve recycling efforts in the schools, reduce car idling in driveways, promote school gardens and on-site kitchen and cafeteria composting, promote use of school water fountains, and to find efficiencies in green purchasing for the schools. It organized the Earth Day celebration and also proudly presents a new website: www.waylandgreenteam.org.

One of the projects for this summer is Gardens and Composting. The Green Team is working with Claypit Hill School to establish on-site kitchen and cafeteria composting and school gardens.

On Tuesday, June 7, shop at Whole Foods in Wayland and 5 percent of the net sales will go to the Wayland Green Team’s School Gardens and Composting project. The proceeds will help fund the materials (timber, mesh, hardware) for the permanent compost bins, which will be built July 12-15.

The pilot starts in Fall 2011, when parents and Green Team volunteers will show the children how to separate their valuable food scraps from recyclables and from “real” waste when they finish with their lunches.

The Green Team decided to concentrate on Claypit Hill because the principal and teaching staff there proved to be early adopters of this effort. The school also has an active vegetable gardening program in place – both after school and in-school. If this pilot program is a success, the Team will work with other schools to make this a district-wide program that Wayland can be proud of.

Volunteers are needed for building the bins on July 12-15 and for helping out at lunch time during the first weeks of the new school year. Visit the Green Team website, www.waylandgreenteam.org, for more information and volunteering opportunities.