Environmental club posters around Cross. Students pick up snacks from the share table. Instead of throwing their meatball sandwiches into a trash can, Wilbur Cross High School students sorted their food scraps into a large compost bin, put their uneaten fruit and Goldfish packets on a share t able, and placed their plastic forks and sauce packets into the garbage. They did so on Thursday as the East Rock high school’s environmental club has grown its composting operation, which began as a small pilot in May 2023, into a full-scale program woven into students’ and teachers’ daily life. After initially partnering with local nonprofit Peels Wheels on small-batch, once-a-week composting, Cross has now joined the district’s expanding compost initiative with regional partner Blue Earth Compost. Since starting with Blue Earth in October, Cross has diverted about 3,100 pounds of food scraps away from the school’s dumpsters. Cross is one of nine New Haven public schools that compost with the help of Blue Earth. The school district began its compost pilot program with John Martinez, Barnard, New Haven Academy, and High School in the Community. It gained funding to support those schools through the ReFED’s Catalytic Grant Fund. When that grant ended in June 2025, the program was added to the district’s USDA grant, which went on to fund composting at Metro, Truman, Worthington Hooker, and Sound School before the end of last school year. The USDA grant was supposed to end in May 2025 but the city and school district were able to get a year extension to be able to continue running the pilot this year, too. Blue Earth picks up the compost once a week at the nine participating schools. Over the past three years, 86,077 pounds of food scraps have been collected between the schools. Wilbur Cross sophomores and environmental club members Ayerim Cordin and Sofia Ganiga said the shift is visible every lunch period as they joined educators Kim Anderson and Barbara Sasso in collecting food scraps Thursday. While the club members suited up in gloves and manned the cafeteria’s two sorting stations, Cordin helped at one to point to the trash or compost bins guiding students through where to throw each item on their tray. Student after student showed the ease of separating each item into its correct place. To avoid filling the compost bin too quickly, the students stacked their trays off to the side. Previously, school custodial staff would have to fill 14 trash bags each day, according to these environmental club members. Now, thanks to the expanded compost program, cafeteria waste has dropped to just four bags a day. In October, Cross collected 660 pounds of food scraps. In November, it collected 2,440 pounds. “It’s cool to think we can actually make a difference,” said Ganiga, who joined the environmental club her freshman year. “We always talk about making a difference but here, you can literally see the difference.” In addition to composting, the environmental club has expanded its share table initiative, redistributing unopened snacks and fruit throughout the school when those foods are not wanted by students who must pick up a full lunch tray. Sasso, a retired veteran English teacher turned substitute teacher, worked to clean the school store space last week for the club to store and refrigerate remaining food from the share table. On Thursday, Anderson and Sasso joined ABM Energy Sustainability Manager for NHPS Michelle Martinelli and city Recycling Educator Rose Richi to stock the transformed food redistribution hub. Anderson noted that she is no longer the school’s sole “snack lady,” a nickname she earned because she would previously store all share table goods in her first floor English classroom. Now, Cross has a designated school storage space with a full fridge that doesn’t completely take over her classroom’s mini fridge. Cross art teacher Melody Gallagher stopped by the newly repurposed school storage place Thursday to fill a basket up with unused fruit, hummus, and sunflower seeds for her classrooms. On Fridays, any leftover share table goods are donated to local food rescue nonprofit Haven’s Harvest to distribute around town. “Students are always hungry, and access to healthy food isn’t relatively available for everyone,” Gallagher said. Now the fruit that used to get tossed in the trash ends up in classrooms like Gallagher’s for students who constantly tell teachers they’re hungry throughout the day. One substitute teacher popped into Thursday’s 10:40 a.m. lunch wave to pick out her usual red apples from the share table bin to put into a favorite lunch recipe she’s created. She uses the apples when available to mix into her tuna salad, which also includes celery, eggs, and light mayo.   While Anderson and Sasso manage the daily system, they agreed the program is built on student momentum. The environmental club prepped the school’s student body for the expanded composting program at the start of the year by creating an informational video to help train students in the do’s and don’ts of sorting. “This is our problem,” Ganiga added. “If it’s just adults doing it, no one’s going to keep it up.” Cordin agreed, saying she most enjoys seeing the gradual filling of a compost bin throughout lunch waves. “Composting shows us how important it is to care about the environment. It’s only going to help us be better adults one day,” she concluded. Sasso said that “all kids are learning that this is what you do with your food. It’s a 21st-century life skill. You introduce it at school so they can take it home and be adults who can teach others.” Anderson and Sasso have also found that the environmental club’s wok spans across several students’ interests, making it so youth from all different backgrounds want to volunteer. Students that speak Pashto and Spanish are joining to help share with their fellow non-native-English speakers about the group’s environmental efforts. Cross’ staff talked with cafeteria staff about capturing more leftover food Thursday by offering to wheel a compost bin to the kitchen at the end of the day to also put remaining food scraps directly from the kitchen into the school’s compost before it reaches the trash. Cross Principal Matt Brown called the environmental club’s efforts “incredible.” . “It shows that there was an enormous amount of time invested,” he said. “The increase in participation is phenomenal. The way students are passing food along instead of tossing it shows how aligned the whole building is becoming.” The effort has also sparked conversations about urging the district to revisit its food contracts and cafeteria menus. Anderson noted that composting has made it clear that hundreds of students pick up full lunch trays each day only because they’re required to do so to get a single item they actually want, like an apple or a chocolate milk. In a recent Thought Exchange survey shared by the school’s superintendent to the community, food and lunch ranked as a a highly rated topic shared by students, teachers, and parents alike. Their concerns noted requests for “better” lunch food options to keep students fed and less distracted from learning. Rose Richi helps to stock Cross’s share table redistribution hub for students and staff. The post Cross Keeps Composting appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less