High School Juniors Pilot Innovative Restaurant Composting Program

LARCHMONT, NY — The future looks bright for four Mamaroneck High School juniors and they are returning the favor by helping to make the future more sustainable in a creative way.

The four Mamaroneck High School juniors, Hayley Ganis, Addy Bartlett, Sofia Pellegrini and Hannah Pollack, are piloting a commercial food scraps recycling program in three Larchmont restaurants. Tequila Sunrise, Alondra's and Bango Bowls will kick off the innovative initiative starting in early November.

The pilot project was developed through Mamaroneck High School’s OCRA program.

OCRA, an acronym for Original Civics Research and Action, is an elective offered to Mamaroneck High School students. Participating students devote extensive time in this program. They are taught about community issues and helped to develop problem-solving skills to address those issues of special concern to them.

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The four juniors were unanimous in their enthusiasm for OCRA.

"OCRA is my favorite class," Pellegrini explained. "It encourages us to be free-thinking and independent. Everyone feels supported all the time. We get to set our own personal goals and we get to determine what it is we want to work on."

Ganis, Bartlett, Pelligrini and Pollack came together as a group because they shared a passion for environmental issues.

They picked composting because, as Bartlett said, "It’s a great way to be sustainable."

Under the guidance of their OCRA advisor, Joe Liberti, these students began their project in their sophomore year by researching the impact of food waste on the environment. They were taught specific ways to look at the issue, doing a root cause analysis and applying basic systems thinking. These tools provided them with data, which enabled them to take a comprehensive approach towards developing their pilot program.

While their sophomore year was spent laying the groundwork for their project, their junior year has been focused on implementation of the project.

The implementation phase has involved the hard work of presenting to the Sustainability Collaborative and to eco investors. This outreach to the community has yielded concrete results, according to the students. They made connections with three new mentors, including co-founder of Me Cycle, Mark Manley; Village of Mamaroneck Committee for the Environment's Jen LeClair; and Chief Growth Officer at Bright Feeds, Laxmi Wordham. The students also found financing for their pilot from Bright Feeds.

The students also conducted a survey of local restaurants to assess interest and met with restaurant managers and staff. Based on this data gathering, they chose three restaurants, which back up to the same parking lot. They have contracted with Curbside Compost to supply three 64-gallon bins for six months, which will be placed in the lot and serviced once a week.

Curbside Compost will provide training to staff at the restaurants.

The enterprising students report that they are pleased with their progress and grateful for the support they have received, but they say they understand they are just at the beginning of a long journey.

"This pilot is a case study," Ganis said. "We hope that we can repeat the pilot, expand our work to other restaurants and make the case to our local government that we as a community need to be food scrap recycling."

Pollack said that seeing how big of a difference they can make is as eye-opening as learning the nuts and bolts of making their ideas a reality.

"When we think about what we are doing and where we are going, we realize we can make a change," she said. "This has been a very powerful experience."

For more information on the OCRA commercial food scrap recycling project, follow them on Instagram or contact them via email.