For our second civic action, we emailed Dara Ward, the Energy & Sustainability Manager for the Saint Vrain Valley School District. During our interactions with Dara Ward, we learned many things about what the district is currently doing to help reduce waste as well as what the logistics would be behind implementing a composting program into Silver Creek. We first emailed her on February 5th to explain what our goal was and to see if we could get some answers to questions we’d been wondering about. Our email read:
Hello,
Our names are Nicole Wilson and Kaitlyn Ryan, and we are working to introduce a composting program to Silver Creek High School as part of our Civics In Action project in our Junior government class. Our goal is to decrease the amount of compostable waste that our school produces and to educate our fellow students about the environmental benefits of composting. So far, we have surveyed 300 students at our school and have found that 71.3% of Silver Creek students said they would use a composting bin at school if one was available. Here are our findings below:
1.) Do you know how composting works? 62.7% said yes 34% said kind of 3.3% said no
2.) Would you be open to learning more about composting? 46.3% said yes 32.7% said kind of 21% said no
3.) Would you use a composting bin at school? 71.3% said yes 18.7% said kind of 10% said no/don’t eat at school
We chose this topic as our project because we understand how composting works and are passionate about making positive changes to our local environment. We are also aware of the challenges and complications of implementing a waste reduction program in our school; it would be much appreciated if we could get your input about how to efficiently do so by answering the following questions:
1.) What would be the most practical method of transporting the compostable waste?
2.) Is there a specific budget for waste and material flows and would composting increase this cost significantly?
3.) Is it possible to implement a district wide policy that would require all schools to provide a composting program?
We thank you for taking the time to read our email and would love to hear your responses. If any of our questions are unclear, we are also open to doing a phone interview if that would work better. You can contact us at (Kaitlyn’s email) or (Nicole’s email). Thanks again!
Sincerely,
Kaitlyn Ryan and Nicole Wilson.
A few days later, we heard back from her and learned many things about our current district policies and who we can talk to in order to learn more about them. Her email was as follows:
Hi Kaitlyn,
Thanks for reaching out. I'm glad to hear that you are pursuing this important topic.
To answer your questions:
1.) What would be the most practical method of transporting the compostable waste?
We use Eco-Cycle to haul our compostable materials (at the 12 schools that compost) and this is the most effective method as they have a very unique program working with our schools. http://ecocycle.org/schools
2.) Is there a specific budget for waste and material flows and would composting increase this cost significantly?
Yes, we have a district budget for Western to pick-up our trash and recycle materials. They do not service compost as Eco-Cycle does this for our Green Star Schools. The pricing is reasonable, but that is because they receive grants and local/state funding.
3.) Is it possible to implement a district wide policy that would require all schools to provide a composting program?
Currently, the schools that compost must be Green Star Schools through Eco-Cycle. It's a very intensive program that provides training for staff, students and teachers, activities, materials, guidelines and infrastructure to ensure that the program is successful. Otherwise, adding composting to a school has lots of challenges. We have found that Eco-Cycle's GSS program leads to long-lasting, valuable change. We add at least one school per year to the program. However, if a school has the commitment and ability to do on-site composting, that is a great way to begin the process and get familiar with the successes and challenges and improve. Kim Fung at Silver Creek is working on adding that type of initiative. But you really need a full school commitment and administration buy-in. Ultimately, the goal would be that every school is a Green Star School.
Let me know if that helps. Perhaps we can all meet to go over potential ideas and strategies?
-Dara
Obviously, this email was immensely helpful and gave us a ton of information that we weren’t able to find out by ourselves. She answered all of our questions in detail and gave us a clearer idea of what we need to do to move forward. We were intrigued by her idea to meet in person and sent her another email:
Thank you for emailing us back! Your information was tremendously helpful and we appreciate the time you took to inform us about what the district is doing to help this issue. We are wondering if you’re available on Tuesday February 13th from 7:30 to 9:00 so that we can conduct a phone interview or perhaps an interview in person if you’re willing to come to Silver Creek to speak with us. Thank you!
To which she replied:
I suggest that your first step is meeting with Kim so she can get you up to speed and you can work together as she has a lot already underway. I would be happy to meet with all of you afterwards or during this initial step. There are two other students interested waste diversion, specifically in increasing recycling at Silver Creek. So maybe it might make sense to get the entire group together. These next two weeks are very busy for me, but I can meet 2/22 or 2/23 pretty much anytime 8:30-4:30.
Unfortunately, our Civics In Action project had a due date of February 13th at the latest, so we couldn’t meet with Dara before the due date and therefore couldn’t include an interview in our final project. To let her know, we sent her this:
Unfortunately, our project is due before then but I’ll make sure to talk to Kim about what our next step should be. Thank you again for all your help!
This concluded our interactions with Dara Ward and despite our disappointment about not being able to meet with her, we were grateful that she gave us such useful information and helped us connect with other people who were passionate about the same goal. Through this civic action, we learned how important it is to communicate and connect with people in order to get the information you’re looking for. We also learned that many people are more than willing to help if you reach out of your comfort zone and ask them.