Project title: Composting for Climate Change

Team: C-Cubed

St Joseph’s secondary school   Spanish Point   Ireland   18 Student’s age: 16-17 years old

How does composting food waste from our school contribute to promoting good air quality and reduce the production of gases linked to climate change?

Learning to compost and use it correctly is a way of introducing the “circular economy” to our lives. This refers to keeping resources moving from use to recycle to reuse and avoiding the need for landfill. (Agri-Aware, 2022). This is a very important concept to be taught in school as knowledge of this may reduce the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Our project had 3 main phases.

Phase 1 – Bin dissection

Method –
remove the bin from the general purpose area
find the mass of the plastic bag with all the contents – record
spread out some plastic bags on the floor
empty the contents of the bin out on the floor
sort into 4 piles – compostable, plastic, paper, aluminium, wrappers and general waste
find the mass of each pile.

Phase 2 – compost simulation

Hypothesis – If the composting process is not done correctly then more greenhouse gases will be produced than if done correctly

Independent variable – composting method
Dependent variable – mass of gas in the balloon

Equipment – 2 x 18L water bottles, food waste, 2 x wide mouth balloons, mass balance, shredded paper

Method
Locate 2 x 18L water bottles from our local water company – Clare Springs
Label the bottles A and B
Weigh out 2 x 5kg of food waste
Into A place the food waste and seal with a wide mouth balloon
Into B place alternate layers of food waste and shredded paper, seal with a wide mouth balloon
Leave both bottles in the fume cupboard and monitor balloon inflation over a 1 week period.
Record the mass of the balloon after one week.

Phase 3 – Put together a presentation for the Green schools committee illustrating our findings.

The bin analysis and graph shows that just from one day, the school could be recycling 2,505g of material with 40.3% being compostable. All of this bag ends up in landfill which comes at considerable costs to both the school finances and the environment.

The results from our compost simulators were surprisingly very visual. They were left in the fume hood for safety and the mass of the balloons were recorded after one week. These results showed how important it is to compost correctly with layers of green and brown. Green material is rich in nitrogen and brown materials are rich in carbon. The micro-organisms including “bacteria themselves consist of carbon and nitrogen, with a ratio of 8:1 (8 units of carbon to every 1 unit of nitrogen). To grow and multiply, they need carbon to maintain themselves and for energy, and nitrogen to grow proteins.” (Compost science, 27/3/23)

In our simulators the food was breaking down anaerobically, while this is not ideal it showed that if this occurs in a landfill the volume of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, produced are much greater than if food was layered with carbon sources. We also found that after 4 weeks the food in simulator A produced liquid from the food breakdown, if this were to leak into the water table from land fill sites it could lead to pollution and/or eutrophication. Under normal circumstances composting is best under aerobic conditions.

In conclusion we accept our hypothesis as our short experiment shows that composting reduces the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

In completing this project we learned quite a lot. To begin we now have a better understanding of the scale of waste produced in our school. At our local recycling centre at Inagh, Co Clare it costs €7 to dispose of 1 bag of general waste whereas it only costs €5 to recycle as much as your car will hold. Each waste disposal company has different charging structures but all charge more to remove general waste over recyclable waste. Therefore if we as students made a better effort to dispose of our waste correctly then the school would save money. This can only happen if students are provided with clearly labelled bins and help on how to sort their waste. This is why we have put together the attached presentation to our Green Schools and student council committees to campaign for these bins.

Download project poster PDF

Composting-for-Climate-Change-Student-Council-presentation-.pdf

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