BERNARDSTON — Students at Bernardston Elementary School have gotten back into their composting habits that were disrupted amid the shift to remote schooling during the peak of the pandemic.
The program was resurrected in April with the help of the Greenfield-based Franklin County Solid Waste Management District.
Amy Donovan, the waste management district’s program director, has been working with schools in Franklin County since 2007. According to Donovan, she began her career in Franklin County by setting up a program similar to the one in Bernardston at Warwick Community School. Since then, she has set up 25 composting programs across the county.
“Franklin County is a statewide leader in composting programs,” Donovan said. She noted that several regions, particularly those in more urbanized areas of the state, lack the same level of oversight as Franklin County. The Franklin County Solid Waste Management District was formed in 1989 and now includes 21 member towns.
After the pandemic-induced pause, Donovan was not able to work with local schools again until March of this year. Over the next month, she set about reviving shut-down composting programs at Bernardston and other local schools.
Initially, she met with stakeholders such as the school principal, parents and custodial staff to sort out the details of how the program would operate. Later, Donovan held an all-school presentation via Zoom, explaining to the students how they would sort their waste from now on.
Donovan then came to the school in person, setting up barrels — one for compost and one for trash — with appropriate signs for each of them. She helped the students ease into the new regime by making announcements about how to compost.
It didn’t take long for students to figure out how the composting program worked, Donovan said.
“Students do a great job separating their trash and compost into the correct barrels,” she said.
In fact, Pioneer Valley Regional School District Facilities Director Gretchen Licata, who was present when Donovan was visiting, said that in just one day, the children composted 34 pounds of compost compared to 2.5 pounds of trash. Over the course of the three days that Donovan was there, the school composted 109 pounds of food, as opposed to 9.5 pounds of trash.