Towards the end of the 2017-18 school year, Mimi Narayan ’21 approached PEST with an idea for composting. The service had been institutionalized at her old school, and she was connected to the company that carried it out. By the end of the year, she had set up the foundation for further communication with the composting company Organic Diversion.
In the following school year, Narayan worked closely with Dr. Peretz to meet with representatives from Peddie and the company to sort out estimated costs/savings and the logistics of the composting program.
On January 31, 2019, composting was approved to be institutionalized at Peddie. Dennis Zhang ’20 and various involved PEST members created posters and organized a skit to inform the entire school community about this historic change as well as educate everyone on how to properly compost:
- ALL food waste & dining hall napkins can go into the compost bins
- NOTHING ELSE may go in (styrofoam, plastic, utensils, etc.)
On March 20, 2019, following the community meeting skit, the first compost bin was brought out into the dining hall. Earlier, Zhang had assigned PEST members to “compost duty” shifts. Almost every single PEST member (as well as various involved faculty such as Dr. Peretz, Mrs. Morgan, Ms. Cozine, and Mr. Harris) stepped in by either guarding the bins or making sure the Peddie community was using the bins properly.
Compost guarding duties ended at the end of the week, and the community was left to mostly govern itself through the aid of only the various compost posters that had been put up.
Compost is now a key part of the dining hall and foreshadows many more initiatives that PEST plans to bring about.
In addition to saving money, composting re-purposed wasted food (a portion goes to pig feed) that would have ended up in a landfill. Following the first week of its institution, our Organic Diversion representative reported the following weight of waste saved by Peddie:
3-25-18 – 580 lbs
3-28-19 – 500 lbs
4-1-19 – 460 lbs
Read more about composting on the Peddie website: https://www.peddie.org/about-us/stories/stories-detail/~board/news/post/a-shrinking-footprint
Update (4/28/19):
Gail Rosati (representative from Organic Diversion):
“Attached is Peddie School’s compost data for your first month of composting. We wanted you to see that Peddie School is doing a great job and has composted 4540 lbs in April!”
The Peddie Environment 