Uneaten School Snacks? There’s A Cart For That

Sound School senior Ella May is on a mission to help her school cut back on food waste — with the help of a cart and a nudge to her peers to place their uneaten, unopened foods on a share ​“table” in the cafeteria.

May, who is an East Rock native, spent this year centering her senior capstone project at the 60 South Water St. aquaculture-centered high school around food waste and composting. 

May’s project, officially titled ​“Use it or Lose it! Waste Management Around School” has three parts: a handmade pallet composting system for campus brush and landscaping materials with possible pesticides; a food share table for her school’s cafeteria; and a food compost system. 

Her food share cart is stored in the cafeteria for all lunch waves, and encourages students to place their unopened food ​“that are required for kids to take but don’t want” and put them on the cart for other students to have rather than throwing away the unopened foods. 

For May’s capstone she worked with mentor Domingo Medina, founder and owner of Peels & Wheels, a pedal-powered community composting business.

May introduced her green food share cart to the school in February. The cart has three levels for students to drop off unopened foods. Everyday after the last lunch wave May checks the cart for remaining food, which typically is already taken by students and staff, and delivers it to the school’s student services office. 

The cart is also equipped with signs giving students notice of what’s allowed and not allowed on the cart. She also placed signage near the lunch room’s trash bins to encourage students to put extra food in the cart instead.

Since starting the food share table, May has developed partnerships with the cafeteria staff, like cafeteria staffers Ms. Deb and Ms. Angie, who keep her updated on how used the cart is daily. 

During her own lunch, May said, she occasionally peeks into the cafeteria’s trash bins to see if students are wasting less food. 

May transferred to the aquaculture-themed regional magnet school midway through her sophomore year at Wilbur Cross High School. While at Cross, May was a student of Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES) Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), where she pursued her interest in photography. 

However, after discovering she no longer was interested in pursuing photography, she began to look into farming and gardening. She also wanted to go to a smaller high school. With that new interest in mind, May considered transferring to either Common Ground or Sound. 

Growing up, May described her family as an ​“eco-family” who typically ate locally produced foods, has solar panels, electric cars, and a compost heap in the backyard. She noted that her father is also an environmental magician. 

May recalled struggling with her eating habits at times which sparked an interest in sustainable agriculture to ​“help myself, community, and nature.” 

She now has a specific interest in pursuing regenerative agriculture. 

Prior to the Covid pandemic, Sound’s capstone requirement for its students was for each grade to do a class project. This would prepare students for their personal senior year projects. Other senior capstones range from building boats to breeding fish. 

May began to brainstorm for her senior project toward the end of her junior year last year and considered ideas like building a school green house and farming kelp. 

She ultimately decided on composting and a food share table as they were most feasible, she said.

Medina helped May to decide on which type of compost system would work best at the school. He also helped her secure funds for the project. 

Her goal was to create one round of compost by this month to use for the school’s garden beds by collecting food scraps from a dozen teachers that signed up to collect and donate their home food scraps to May’s project. 

However, it took longer than expected for May to receive her compost materials and therefore she was not able to create a batch of compost yet. But, she said, she still hopes to partner with Gather New Haven’s Schooner camp for youth this summer to collect food scraps. 

May’s goal is to support current students who have an interest in keeping the compost system going next school year. 

During her project research, May visited Common Ground to see what a school-wide compost heap takes to maintain and could look like. 

“What I’m doing here is small because I feel like we should be doing it,” she said. 

Some years ago a previous Sound student also created a composting-focused capstone and had a tumbler system for the project that collected food scraps from the school’s cafeteria. However the system was not maintained after the student graduated and moved on. 

May plans to attend the University of Connecticut (UConn) next year with a major in Sustainable Plant and Soil Systems. While pursuing her degree, May said she is willing to support her soon-to-be former high school in keeping up with her compost system. 

She plans to also write up guide sheets for future students to learn how to compost with her particular system and work with the staff who previously expressed interest in providing home food scraps. 

“We have a club around bee keeping so this could be something like that,” she said. 

The pallet compost system is used to collect landscaping materials like flower stems and flower bouquet scraps gathered by the school’s flora-focused club. 

“It’s for things you shouldn’t really put in dumpster,” she said. ​“They can just sit there and do their good decomposing thing.” 

May said she hopes that the school district will soon join students like herself and the New Haven Climate Movement in supporting food rescue efforts and inform students of their expanding plans for composting and becoming a more environmentally friendly district. (Click here to read a previous story detailing NHPS related efforts.)

“If students aren’t hearing about it then it’s not happening enough,” she said.

She added that many of her peers are excited about decreasing food waste in their schools but don’t know where to start. She said without the support of her family and Sound teachers like Pebbles Lacross, her project idea would have felt too daunting. 

“School is where we’re learning to treat our environment. There has to be more implemented so we’re setting up people to have this be a regular part of life,” she said. 

Reach for comment via email on Friday, Lacross described May as an ​“environmentalist through and through.” 

“She strives to make the world a cleaner and better place that can support us for years to come,” she said. ​“Ella saw a need on campus and has worked tirelessly to gather support through community partners and the Sound School to meet that need. She researched, wrote and received a microgrant from The Greater New Haven Green Fund to provide funding for her project. I am so proud of the progress she made to make our school and campus a more environmentally friendly place by reducing food waste and revamping our compost system.“

When asked what kind of impact Ella’s food share cart and composting efforts have had on Sound Lacross said, ​“Ella realized how much food was being wasted because students are required to take a certain number of items at lunch. Before the cart unopened uneaten food was put in the garbage. Now as quick as students put food on the cart another student is coming up behind to take that item.” 

She added, ​“Our composting system was started four years ago as a capstone project, we had two composting tumblers which were not being utilized appropriately. We were desperately missing a space to put weeds and other yard waste that The Agriculture and Plant Technology Classes gather after maintaining our campus gardens. Little did I know Ella was stashing yard waste this school year until we had an active compost system that could support that amount of organic matter. We now have a large three section composter for yard waste, and four additional composters that we can use.”

For the project May received a $1,000 grant from the New Haven Green Fund. She used almost $700 on the compost system and tools needed for upkeep. 

“It’s like a fun way to bridge together all the work that we do here,” she said. 

“Its a great way to connect over food, even if it is just scraps. First you connect over the meal then your compost,” she said. 

May hopes to try sustainable gardening, WOOFing (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), or teaching about sustainable gardening in a school like Sound. 

May is a climate justice intern for the New Haven Climate Movement, takes an Arabic course at Yale, and has spent three seasons planting trees on the weekends as an intern for the Urban Resources Initiative (URI).

Next year May has already recruited two juniors to keep up with her food share cart to keep food from being wasted in the cafeteria. 

See below for other recent Independent articles about teaching, reading, working and studying inside New Haven Public Schools classrooms.

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