Rhonda Keyser (Cafeteria Culture) on efficiency of school food scrap collection
Rhonda Keyser explains that schools generate large consistent volumes of food scraps, making them the most efficient places to recover organics. She describes students' hands-on learning and sense of ownership at compost sites, urging the council to pass Intro 369.
Hi, I'm Rhonda Kaiser.
I'm Program and Policy Director for Cafeteria Culture.
Our team works together with Mr.
Rush to evaluate and to shape the food scraps collection pilot.
And one of the biggest lessons from our pilot is how efficient it is to collect food scraps.
from schools.
We realize that our opinion differs from DSNY about whether this is possible, intro 369 is possible, but it's a new idea, and new ideas require conversational generosity.
So that's what we're hoping to engage in.
And that's what we're hoping to receive.
And because in just four schools, one compost coordinator diverted more than a ton of food scraps in only a few months, reaching that same amount of
people, individuals, by asking individual households to separate and set out their food scraps would require educating and engaging hundreds, if not thousands, of families.
Schools generate large, consistent volumes of food scraps every day, making it the easiest and most efficient places to recover organics.
And then by integrating schools into neighborhood composting systems, students learn how and they learn why and actually how to divert their food scraps through hands-on education.
And while teaching them about recycling programs and the virtue of separating their waste is a great idea, actually giving them the value of the benefit of their...
so-called waste, but actually resources, they actually feel the difference.
And it's palpable what students can understand about it.
And I've said this many times, but our students from PSMS 46 visited Polo Grounds and they looked around and they said to Domingo, do you own this site?
And he said, this is funded by taxes, so technically we all own this site.
and the kids beamed to think that they owned a site, that they could actually make a difference and make a huge difference.
These are students, some of our most vulnerable students, who could make a huge difference where the Brown Bin program doesn't exist.
Our program disrupts the truck-based and harmful and polluting industrial model, and it offers a new solution and another world is possible.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And with that, this panel is relieved.
Thank you so much.
Can I please bring up Mary Ellen Sullivan, Matthew Chivello, and Wendy Frank?
You may begin.