Composting Bins Go In at Claypit and Wayland Middle

Months of planning and securing donations and supplies led at last to the construction of composting bins at and .

The Wayland Public School PTO’s Green Team spearheaded efforts to construct the bins, but they had some help from enthusiastic teachers and administrators in the system.

Deane Coady teaches second grade at Claypit Hill and has been a proponent for beginning a composting program for a few years.

“I’m so happy to see it come to fruition,” Coady said, standing at the Claypit “construction site” where Green Team members and volunteers worked for several days to build the bins.

The team built two bins at CHS and one at WMS, both schools that already have flourishing gardens where the compost can be used efficiently.

Both locations received a large, tarp-covered bin for “browns” – ideally shredded leaves – and one or two bins lined with wire mesh and aerated with tubing through the center for “greens,” the lunch scraps.

In June, second graders at Claypit designed to introduce the students to separating their lunch waste into compostable materials, recyclable items and true waste.

The pilot day went so well that beginning this fall, all the students at Claypit will participate in the program. For about the first eight weeks, the Green Team will work to provide a significant volunteer commitment to staff each lunch period and help the kids learn the ropes.

“It’s very exciting,” said Debbie Bearse, principal at Claypit. “We’re all going to learn so much.”

She said “greening” has been an overall goal of Wayland Public Schools for some time and while it is not yet an official part of the curriculum, many teachers already incorporate lessons on recycling and green living into their classrooms. Teachers will become more involved this year as they help their students understand the lunch composting project.

Currently, Wayland is not set up to recycle the polystyrene lunch trays the students use, but Green Team member Molly Faulkner is working on a solution. She said one option could be working with Refoamit, a Framingham company that recycles Styrofoam.

For now, she said she is thrilled to see the greening efforts lead to composting bins at CHS and WMS. Faulkner said the Green Team hopes to eventually develop a school system wide composting program – Happy Hollow also already has a garden – but is taking it one step at a time.

The Green Team raised most of the money to build the bins and enhance the gardening efforts at CHS, Happy Hollow and the middle school through a 5 Percent Day hosted by in June during which 5 percent of all purchases were donated to the Green Team.