Idea 5

Now through September 27, we will be sharing ways that Sound View has been working to reduce our carbon footprint, and ideas for what we can all do at home.
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Idea #5: Reduce your food waste and compost the rest! We worked on educating campers about food waste this summer by implementing a system at mealtime called ORT. "Ort" is an Old English word meaning "a scrap or remainder of food after a meal." Before eating meals, we talk to campers about how between 30-40% of our food supply in the United States goes to waste. Much of this is wasted between the farm and retail stages and at supermarkets and restaurants, but 150,000 tons of food are also tossed out in US households each day. We encourage kids to think about how much food they take from the buffet line and how much they're throwing away by weighing our ORT after each meal. Campers are excited to waste less and less food each day, a lesson that we hope they'll take home with them after camp!

For those banana peels, apple cores, and veggie scraps that we don't eat, Sound View has a compost pile and worm bins. Composting food is better than throwing it in the trash because food in the landfill lets out methane (a greenhouse gas) as it breaks down, due to the anaerobic conditions of landfills. Plus, composting provides fertilizer for your garden!

Check out some of our worms and the beautiful soil they're creating for us out of food scraps. Amazing! Worm bins are great for people who live in apartments, don't have enough room for a compost bin, or don't have curbside composting. They don't smell at all, and they're easy to make out of household items! The worm bin in the picture in the comments was made out of a simple plastic tub with holes drilled into the top and bottom. Make sure to put something underneath to catch the nutritious "compost tea" that you can use as a natural fertilizer on your plants.