I ducked my head and winced, but the autistic 6th grader had a point. We had come to advocate for environmental responsibility within the DC public school system, not chit chat about carrot sticks. Nate had just suggested on-site composting as a possible solution to our school's need for responsible food waste disposal, perhaps even better than the heavily polluting transfer trucks that had been picking up our food waste. We didn't understand why the composting program we'd been participating in for the past three years at our school had suddenly stopped mattering to the DC government: last June, the compost pickup contract had mysteriously lapsed and now all school waste was going into the landfill. We were there to find out why, and how to get things up and running again.
"We were taught how to put things into recycling, trash, and compost bins. We have done it and it worked. But then -- kaboom! -- it stopped. We want to know how this happened. Who exactly is responsible?" demanded 8-year-old Zia. The audience actually clapped. In spite of the clear "no applause allowed" sign posted outside of the hearing.
"What I see in the adult world looks like you don't care. Kids do. It matters to us more because we will live longer than you. We want to live healthier, too." explained her classmate, Eli.
"Are you calling me old?" joked the panel chair, Councilman White. Eli visibly blushed, and squeaked out a timid "Um, yes?"
I know our eleven-person group was primarily comprised of people too young to vote (yet), but we knew our stuff and presented an articulate and compelling case for restarting composting at our school. Was Councilman White taking us seriously? I found out later that we'd ended up on his twitter feed, but maybe kids testifying was simply an unusual form of entertainment, a break from the norm. Would anything be done to get cafeteria composting up and running at our school any time soon? I was proud of my students' civic activism, but dubious about our impact.
Well it turns out that someone was listening after all. Earlier this week, our friend Bobby at DGS stopped by the school to thank student testifiers in person for their efforts that have apparently lit a fire under the new DGS director. He demanded that his department prioritize school composting, and indicated that he would visit our school and others doing this critical environmental education work. Until we testified, and wrangled a few other passionate environmental educators at other public schools to submit their own testimony, Bobby had been pretty sure nothing would happen this school year. Now there was an urgent demand from the top to get a compost pickup service in place, and retraining for custodial staff on the calendar in the near future.
I'm so proud of our students!!
Maybe in coming years we can even get composting going at City Hall. I mean, seriously, Mayor Bowser, for all of this talk about DC's focus on the environment, the security guard didn't want to let me into the building with a non-plastic fork to eat my salad and I had to pack out the banana peel left from my lunch so I could compost it at home....
