ORANGE — It started as one high school senior’s project aimed at reducing his school’s cafeteria waste, but now students at five area schools are joining the cause.
Students at Ralph C. Mahar Regional High School — where it all started — Four Rivers Charter Public School, Great Falls Middle School, Greenfield High School and Mohawk Trail Regional High School are engaging in Waste Wars, an eco-friendly competition.
From Friday to April 13, teams at each of the schools will weigh and record the amount of landfill waste their cafeterias produce each day.
The Waste Warriors, who started the effort and represent Mahar in the competition, will keep track of the waste totals and grant the team whose cafeteria produces the least weight in waste — per meal — $500 to continue their efforts.
“The idea is they’re supposed to innovate new ways to reduce the waste in their cafeterias,” said Hugo Frost, a Mahar senior and founding member of the Waste Warriors.
Frost got the idea for Waste Wars after inciting changes at his own school’s cafeteria.
Having interned at Seeds of Solidarity, a nonprofit focused on sustainability, Frost chose to do something that benefited the environment for his Senior Honors Project class.
Noticing the high number of polystyrene plates and bowls students were throwing out in the cafeteria, Frost approached Food Services Director Jacki Dillenback in December to talk about ending the wasteful practice.
“Every day, we’d get plates and bowls. We’d go through like 500 plates,” Frost said. “Now they’re hard, plastic trays and get rewashed.”
According to Frost, Dillenbeck was able to find cheap, plastic trays within three weeks of him bringing the problem to her attention. The fact that they are washable means less waste and money saved in the long run.
Other students in Frost’s class soon joined him, and they became the six-person Waste Warriors, crusading against Mahar’s garbage. Just last week, the group put up a receptacle for food waste and was able to cut the total weight of waste in half.
“It went from 114.6 pounds of waste to 57.2,” said Frost, explaining that the leftover food students throw in the new receptacle is no longer considered waste because it is brought to local farms and fed to pigs.
The group has also added different recycling cans in the school.
“Then, I came up with the idea to kind of branch off to other schools and they could reduce waste in their own ways through this competition,” Frost said.
Frost said the Waste Warriors have visited the participating schools, and that the whole seventh grade at Four Rivers is participating as a team, the Greenfield and Mohawk teams each have about a dozen students and Great Falls has around a half a dozen participants.
Reach David McLellan
at dmclellan@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 268.