This guest post is by a parent of a child Camdenville Primary School, NSW, Lachlan Jobbins.
• School children and parents turn left over food into soil then plants then education
Food Scrap Friday is the community compost program at Camdenville Public School in Newtown.
Started in October 2016 by a couple of parents, Lachlan Jobbins and Georgina Eldershaw, it now runs every week during term time, with a roster of volunteers from the school community.
• Impressive data
Every Friday morning, school families bring their kitchen scraps to the school gate, where volunteers collect them and take them to Camdenville Paddock Community Garden for composting. Each week around 40 families are contributing, and in 2019 they collected and composted 7686kg of kitchen scraps - about 190kg per week.
The project has engaged children in learning about where food comes from and where waste goes. It provides a simple option for families who want to compost but don’t have the space, and it creates another way for the school to introduce practical sustainability education into the classroom.
• Kids getting on board to turn left over food into soil
Inspired by Food Scrap Friday, the children at Camdenville Public have installed compost buckets in every classroom, so fruit and vegetable scraps from morning ‘crunch and sip’ are now being composted instead of being thrown away.
• Showtime!
Food Scrap Friday could easily be replicated in schools and community gardens in the Inner West and beyond. It’s a simple, volunteer-based project that is creating new connections between the school and garden, and providing multiple benefits for both.
• This is what left over food turned into compost turns into - plants - more food