Not just waste: how Poltava region schools turned composting into scientific research
The Novoselivka community is located near Poltava and unites 34 villages with about 5.5 thousand population. There are currently 560 students in the community's three schools. It was here that an interesting experiment on a separate collection of secondary raw materials and organic waste composting was started. This concern for the environment has yielded much more than a clean yard. Now students independently conduct research, and also participate in competitions, go on excursions, and know what ecological thinking is.
What is the problem?
Everyone knows about the environmental problems today. Human pollution is one of the major factors in climate change, environmental degradation, animal threats, and ecosystem damage. This problem is global, but it is also formed at the local level: in Ukraine alone, in 2020 the total amount of accumulated waste amounted to 15 billion 635.3 million tons. And this concerns each of us.
Simple principles help to fight the pollution of the planet, country, or individual settlements: recycling what can be processed; composting the compostable waste; reusing things, and minimizing the use of disposable plastic products. And promoting this approach among people: both children and adults.
What is the solution?
Small agents of big change
The first attempts to compost organic waste began in the current Bozhkivske Lyceum more than seven years ago. Nadiia Vasiukova, a biology and ecology teacher and head of the Green Sails environmental club, not only set up school compost in the yard with her students but also organized a student recycling center in the village. However, with the start of the Agency for Local Development of Territorial Communities, the initiative of separate waste collection and composting in the Novoselivka united territorial community received a new impetus.
"Today, the society's cornerstone is the state of the environment, including for our community. First, it is a large amount of waste that we see on the roadsides, in landfills, under our feet. We can use them wisely, not litter the area. I set myself the task to start small, with sorting in the villages," said the head of the Agency Yulia Popova.
To expand the practice of Bozhkivske Lyceum to other schools, it was decided to announce a "Life without Garbage" competition, and Novoselivka village council allocated cash prizes for participants. The results are impressive. During the month, children from three schools collected 5.5 tons of plastic bottles, glass, polyethylene, cardboard. Both families and local entrepreneurs were encouraged to compete. For the collected secondary resources, the teams received real money from processors from 800 to 2,500 hryvnias. The school spent these funds at its discretion: they bought sports equipment for the students or organized a trip. This practice has been successful. Currently, several recycling points have been opened in the community, where adults bring sorted waste.
Training at Zero Waste Academy also helped Yulia and the team; it's a training and practical course to train specialists in waste management per the new legislation. Anna Prokaieva, coordinator of Zero Waste Kharkiv and Zero Waste Academy: "According to the results of the training, the team of the Novoselivka united territorial community received a drone as a gift. It will be used to survey the community and assess the scale of unauthorized landfills."
"During sorting, we began to notice that there was a lot of organic residue in the mixed waste containers. This organic matter spoils secondary resources that we can hand over for recycling and destroys containers. They rot and break under the weight of organic matter. Therefore, with our next step, we decided to separate organics from solid household waste," Yulia Popova continues.
How does it work?
Don't throw away, compost!
Often the implementation of projects is delayed due to a lack of funds. However, the Novoselivka united territorial community found a way out. Together with the Perspectyva Development Sustainable Development NGO, Yulia Popova has developed two grant projects, the Compost Eco-School, and KomPost. Both applications were approved by donors, which allowed to attract 21 thousand hryvnias. With these funds, they purchased 6 composters, 3 plastic containers for collecting organic matter in food units, reagents for accelerating composting, and garden equipment. The pilot project started at Bozhkivske Lyceum in the summer, and in September Runivshchyna and Novoselivka secondary schools joined it. One of the project's important components was the training on distributive waste collection and composting, which was conducted among students and canteen staff by experts from the Ecoltava association.
"In every school, we have an asset; we've involved high school students. They're conscious leaders who can lead others. Students follow the composting process themselves and know how to do it. We have a separate waste collection in all three schools. The food units have special containers for organic matter, which is then composted. Schools have paper containers for various types of solid waste and plastic ones for food scraps," Yulia Popova said.
And did they succeed?
Waste to science
It turned out that children feel very responsible for waste sorting; they conduct information work with adults and monitor compliance with all recommendations. Participants of the Green Sails environmental club based on Bozhkivske Lyceum regularly clean natural landfills and investigate waste management in their native village.
"One of my students called his research 'Waste Management: The Local Level.' The first thing we started to study was the composition of waste in our village: the amount of plastic, organics, and other types of garbage. We also studied the process of humus formation, how the amount of heat and moisture affect the rate of maturation of fertilizers. At the environmental competitions, we always covered the economic, environmental, and social aspects of the work: what the cost of purchased fertilizer is, how it increases soil fertility," said Yulia Popova.
Some of the current graduates entered Poltava Polytechnic University in the fields of Ecology and Land Management, and Nadia Vasiukova continues her research with the younger generation. New street composters and drugs to accelerate maturation have also become the basis for scientific experiments. Previously, conventional compost pits were used for this purpose.
"My students and I are constantly conducting informational work on composting and various experiments. In particular, we fertilize the land and arrange different types of beds, checking whether the bio packages decompose in the time specified by the manufacturer. We monitor the process of decomposition of solid waste. So far, we have increased the use of eco-bags by residents and we have significantly improved the statistics of sorting and disposal of plastic waste; people burn less grass and green mass," said Nadiia Vasiukova.
Nadiia Vasiukova's students regularly win prizes at the regional Olympiad in ecology and for five years in a row were among the top three in the region in their section at the Academy of Sciences. Also, children successfully perform at the All-Ukrainian competitions in the field of environmental protection, organized by the National Ecological and Naturalistic Center for Student Youth.
According to her, the support of the Agency for Local Development of Territorial Communities has significantly increased the effectiveness of educational activities and information campaigns in which students participate.
"We used to work more like scientists and researchers, but now we can go public with our initiatives. I'm very grateful to our children for their involvement and perseverance with which they join all initiatives. Without the new generation, positive changes in society would be impossible," Nadiia Vasiukova is convinced.
Even more useful solutions
What's next? Sort for the future
The plans of the Novoselivka community include the possible equipping of a municipal composting station. After all, the village has no less such waste than in the city, just the structure is different.
"In the village, leftovers are partly used to feed cattle, but there are leaves and dry grass, deadwood, and tree branches. They are usually burned, which is even worse: there are fires, smoke, harmful emissions. Or they rake it up and throw it in a common container for mixed waste, which increases the volume that our utility company is forced to take to the landfill,' Yulia Popova said.
Currently, containers for sorting solid waste are installed throughout the Novoselivka territorial community. 75% of the community is covered by the waste disposal service. The annual volume of mixed waste in the Novoselivska community is 3700 cubic meters per year. The separate collection allows you to at least halve the amount of garbage found at the Makukhiv landfill, and thus save the community money.
"Adults are easiest to teach through their children, and we do everything we can to ignite our youth and engage as many residents of our community as possible in waste management. After all, it depends on each of us what kind of environment we will leave for the future," Yulia Popova summed up.
In 2020, the Zero Waste Cities program was launched in 11 European countries. This is Zero Waste Europe's program to help cities and communities transition to zero waste. Lviv and Liubotyn in the Kharkiv region joined the program. Cities are co-founded by local organizations that are co-founders of the Zero Waste Alliance Ukraine: Zero waste Lviv, Kharkiv zero waste. The goal of the Program is to accelerate the transition to zero waste at the city level, especially of small and medium-sized municipalities, by implementing current EU legislation and strategies based on citizen-oriented models.
Iryna Myronova, Executive Director of Zero Waste Lviv and Coordinator of the International Project in Ukraine "Transition to Zero Waste: Community by Community": "We recently presented the world's first Zero Waste Community certification system. This approach defines clear criteria for zero-waste communities and provides a specific algorithm of actions from which to start the path to change. The separate collection and composting is an important element of the system."
