 Okay. Welcome everybody. Thanks for being here. Welcome to the sustainable resilient Longmont webinar called Food Waste and the Climate Connection. So this is SRL's first webinar in a series that we'll be putting on, put on by the Zero Waste Committee. So sustainable resilient Longmont collaborates with the Longmont community to cultivate a sustainable and thriving city. As the hub for education, advocacy and action, we support the three pillars of sustainability, environmental protection, responsible economic growth, and social equity. We focus on three main programs. We put on Longmont Earth Day celebration every year. We work to get 100% renewable energy by 2030 for the city of Longmont, and we focus on zero waste. My name is Rachel Zalaya. I'm the program coordinator for SRL, and I have a special place in my heart for the Zero Waste lifestyle. I grew up in New Hampshire. My parents were homesteading. We had raised beds and composting, and we lived on well water, which ran dry every August. So being a conservationist with water has been a part of my life from the beginning. Then after college, I moved to West Africa. I was a Peace Corps volunteer. I was an agricultural volunteer, and I lived in a little village that just lived the 100% zero waste lifestyle. Pretty much nothing was brought in. Everything that they used was produced there, and then there was no waste. Everything was reused and reused. And also the effects of climate change were present as far as deforestation, desertification, decreased rainfall, and food insecurity. So even though they lived this 100% zero waste lifestyle, they were being impacted by climate change. So I'm excited to hear what our speakers have to share today about the connection between food waste and climate change, since this impacts us locally here as well as our global family. So we'll be hearing from our panelists in a moment. Please feel free to ask questions in the Q&A box, and we'll have time at the end for questions. And also our panelists will be sharing action steps. So if that's one of your questions is what can I do, we'll be putting all of those together in a slide at the end of the panel. So I'd like to give a warm welcome to our panelists. Thank you so much for the great work each of you are doing in the field of zero waste. We'll be hearing first from Naomi Curland, who has spent the last decade working and volunteering in the environmental nonprofit sector with a focus on food waste reduction and rescue. She moved to Longmont a little over a year ago, and is now the Executive Director of Longmont Food Rescue. She also serves on the boards of Colorado Eco Women and Sustainable Resilient Longmont, and she's the chair of our SRL Zero Waste Subcommittee. And after Naomi shares, we'll hear from Dan Meech, who's Director of Eco Cycles Composting Department and the Charm Center for Hard to Recycle Materials Facility. Dan and his wife are former Boulder County Organic Farmers, and Dan is passionate about connecting compost from food waste and other organic wastes to compost use. Dan is chair of the Lion Sustainable Futures Commission, co-chair of the Colorado Compost Council, and a member of Boulder County Resource Conservation Advisory Board. Welcome Dan. And then welcome Stephanie Potter, who's an elementary school teacher and a STEM Explorers Advisor at one of the Longmont Green Star Schools, Eagle Press Elementary. Stephanie has lived in Colorado for 28 years, Longmont for 17, and this is her 23rd year of teaching. She enjoys spreading the word about living sustainably and does her best to model these habits with her school and her community. So welcome to all of you and all of our attendees. And with that, I will turn it over to Naomi. Thank you. Just share my screen. And as Rachel mentioned, I am the chair of the SRL Zero Waste Committee and also Executive Director of Longmont Food Rescue, and I'm going to start things off today with some information about food waste and food rescue. So first off, let's look at some statistics on global food waste. Between a quarter and a third of all food produced worldwide goes to waste. The amount of land it takes to grow the food we waste is equal to a land mass the size of China. And just as a quarter or more of all food produced is wasted, a quarter of the fresh water used to produce our food also goes to waste. There are additional environmental impacts beyond the land and water wasted in our food production. On a global scale, our food waste accounts for an estimated 8 to 10% of our greenhouse gas emissions. To put it another way, if our food waste was a country, it would be the third largest producer of carbon dioxide. An international research collective called Project Drawdown measured and ranked the top 100 solutions to reverse global warming and identified reducing our food waste as the number three solution to reverse climate change. Addressing our food waste worldwide has the potential to reduce or sequester up to 94 gigatons of carbon dioxide over the next 30 years. So there is a great need to reduce our food waste, but there is also a great opportunity for global impact by addressing this issue. In the United States, the statistics are even higher. Up to 40% of all the food we produce is wasted, which works out to 133 billion pounds of food a year. This is expensive as well as environmentally damaging. I already mentioned the CO2 impacts, but food waste in landfills also releases methane gas, which is 21 times more harmful to our atmosphere than CO2. And we have a lot of it. Food waste makes up 20% of our landfill weight, making it the single largest municipal waste source. This inverted food pyramid is the EPA's food recovery hierarchy based on environmental impacts. So of course the best solution is to avoid the food waste in the first place through food systems change in production, purchasing, storage, and distribution. But given a certain amount of excess food produced in the process, the next best thing is getting that extra food to those in need. Donating food keeps it in our food chain and out of landfills. If the food isn't fit for human consumption, it can often be fed to livestock, again keeping it in a food chain. Anything that is no longer edible can be composted, which the other panelists will speak on in greater detail. The overall goal is to keep all our food out of the landfills, where it pollutes our atmosphere with methane gas. When it comes to land and water, half of our land and 80% of our fresh water is used for food production. But a quarter of our fresh water is lost through food waste. Massive resources, time, and energy go into producing food that never gets eaten. While at the same time, we have over 50 million people in our country going hungry. Food insecurity affects more than one in 11 Coloradans, and almost one in eight children in our communities are hungry. The need is greatest amongst our most vulnerable populations. Roughly two thirds of food stamp participants are children, seniors, or have a disability. As you can see there is a significant need for hunger relief services and a huge opportunity in the form of food that would otherwise go to waste. Longmont food rescue helps bridge the gap between excess food production and the need for healthy food access in our community for people facing food insecurity. Our mission is to redistribute nutritious food that retailers have deemed food waste to feed hungry homeless and low income populations directly. We receive food donations from grocery and convenience stores, local farms and farmers markets, as well as home gardeners. Their generous food donations are delivered by our dedicated team of volunteers to no-cost grocery programs, community food sharing events, and other local food distribution hubs. Longmont food rescue is a relatively young nonprofit, started in 2017, and over the past three years we've steadily grown in our capacity and our impact. These charts represent pounds of food rescued. On the monthly chart you can see the yearly ebb and flow of our seasonal farm and farmers market programs which make up a significant portion of our rescue efforts. Our work is focused on just-in-time rescue of perishable food that would otherwise go to waste. And the last bar at the far right is the food that was rescued in May this year and you can see our summer programs are already off to a strong start. So let's talk about our programs. First off, our no-cost grocery programs provide fresh produce to low income and assisted living communities. Think of it as a free on-site farmers market where residents can shop for their groceries. The setup and the distribution of the food is run by the residents. They have complete ownership of the on-site program. We provide food access but the programs are community led and each site runs their distribution to fit their needs. And so the program may look different from site to site depending on how the residents want to run it. We also offer free food distribution at our monthly community events, produce in the park. Similar to the no-cost grocery program, our produce in the park events are set up like a free farmers market where anyone can come and fill a bag of fresh food to take home. One of our foundational goals is to eliminate barriers to access. So we never require paperwork or collect any personal information. Anyone in need of extra food is welcome. The park setting is a fun shared space where kids and families are encouraged to come for the food and stay for the community. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year we've had to shift our distribution model to produce in the parking lot where our volunteers can safely pre-bag and distribute food through our new drive-up, bike-up, or walk-up format. We're grateful we can continue to serve our community, though we do look forward to being able to gather in a park together again in future years. Fresh Food Connect is a mobile app that connects home and community gardeners with food rescue nonprofits. So a home gardener would download the app and input the food they have to donate that week. And one of our volunteer couriers will come by to pick it up during our scheduled delivery window and bring it to a food distribution site. If you're a gardener, this is a great way to make sure any of your excess homegrown food doesn't go to waste. And you can see in the picture, the courier is using our electric trike that is connected to a trailer. So if you're a Fresh Food Connect courier, you're welcome to use and have access to this trike to bike around town. It's really fun to use. These are some of our distribution partners, including housing sites that host our no-cost grocery programs, community hubs that distribute our grab-and-go meals from convenient stores, as well as some food prep sites that make our fresh produce into delicious meals to feed those in need. The Westview Presbyterian Church Round Pantry is a distribution site that is also given us use of their parking lot for our produce in the parking lot events this spring and summer. And these are a few of our affiliated rescue and hunger relief groups. We wouldn't exist today without the inspiration, assistance, and support of Boulder Food Rescue and the Food Rescue Alliance. These organizations have spread this model of community-run food rescue throughout Colorado and beyond and are committed to equitable food access for anyone facing food insecurity. There's a great four-minute video about the Food Rescue Alliance that I don't have time to play in this webinar, but I'll share a link later in the chat and I highly encourage you to check it out. I also want to recognize Community Food Share in Louisville as our local food bank for Boulder and Broomfield Counties. They are part of the Feeding America Network of Food Banks and they provide food to Longmont through many programs and distribution sites including the R Center and the Round Pantry, as well as mobile food pantries. So they're a wonderful food resource in our community. They do a lot of great work. If you'd like to get involved with Food Rescue, there are a number of ways you can do so. First off, Longmont Food Rescue is always looking for new volunteers and there are many ways you can volunteer. Delivery volunteers or couriers bring food from the donor to the recipient site and there are a range of donation sizes depending on your interest in vehicle size. So some you can do with a bike and a small basket, others with a bike and a trailer or using that fresh food connect electric trike and trailer and some larger donations are best suited for a pickup or an SUV. Then there are on-site volunteers who help with bagging and distribution at our protest in the parking lot events and similar programs. Another way to volunteer is helping us with outreach, fundraising and connecting with new food donors. We're also grateful for Spanish speaking volunteers who are eager to connect with the Latinx community and help with bilingual promotional materials. If you're a gardener, you can donate your excess produce through the fresh food connect app. It's really easy, has a great interface and you can make sure those extras of keenies or tomatoes find a good home. Another vital role is advocacy. This is something you can do in your daily life in your community. Just ask your food producers and vendors if they donate their excess food and if not, ask them why and whether they would be interested in donating through long-long food rescue. We are always delighted to receive referrals and connections to new food donors. And just keep food waste and food rescue in your mind. Start having conversations with friends and families about food waste and share what you've learned today. You might be surprised by the connections and impact you can make by talking about these important issues. Thank you. And I'll hand it back to Rachel now. Thank you so much, Naomi. It's so inspiring to hear about long-long food rescue and what you're doing. My mom and I have a garden and I keep meaning to download the app and get on the list and now that's inspiring me to do that. I know we just had a bunch of spinach that we couldn't finish, so get that over to you. Thank you so much. So, yeah, if panelists or participants, attendees have any questions for Naomi and long long-long food rescue, then please write them in the Q&A and we'll get to them after we hear from the other speakers. So, we were going to have Dan speak next. Oh, and Naomi just added a bunch of links over in the chat. So, feel free to copy and paste or click on those links and follow along with all of that great information. So, I think that since Dan is still connecting, we will have... I think I'm back. You're back. Awesome. Great. Okay, we can't see you yet. Yeah, I turned off my video because it seems to help the connection. Are you able to turn it back on so we can see you while you're talking? I'm afraid it might kick me off. So, yeah, I'm nervous to do that. Okay. Well, let's see how the screen share goes and make sure that we can see your presentation. Okay. Looks like it's working. So, yeah, Dan, looking forward to hearing what you have to share from EcoCycle. Thank you. Always exciting. So, yeah, thank you for the invitation and thank you all for joining us this evening. So, I'm going to talk about why composting is important. Maybe with a little bit different angle than you used to hearing. I'm going to talk a little bit about the current status of Longmont and Boulder County composting. And then we'll talk about things you can do to advance composting locally. So, what's the problem? Why do we care about composting? So, without civilization, things, as you know, take care of ourselves, nature compost itself. Where we have run into problems is that we have invented the modern landfill and modern agriculture. Both of those things have created significant issues for us. One is that we have this linear system of all of our resources shortly ending up in the landfill soon after we extract them. So, it's an extract and bury economy. And obviously, that is not sustainable. I'm getting my video out of the way here. Okay. So, as you heard, actually, as Naomi mentioned, when you landfill organic waste, you are creating methane. It's actually methane that's generated. Methane is on the short term, it's 84% more powerful than carbon dioxide. And normally, you look at 100 year time frame, but we advocated the eco cycle. So, you hear more like a 23% or 23 times more powerful. That methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, but we use 84 because we don't have 100 years. So, we use a 20 year time frame. And methane only lasts about 13 years in the atmosphere anyway. So, and organic waste is a very significant part of our waste stream. It's roughly 40%. That includes not just food waste, but yard waste, soiled paper, like a pizza box, and clean wood waste. So, you would think knowing that we would ban land, we would ban organics from the landfills. And why haven't we done that? Well, in the West, the reason is primarily economics. Landfilling is cheaper than composting. So, that's our primary challenge. But we also have a challenge of end market. So, that's our primary challenge. We also have a challenge of end markets. In Colorado, there's actually very few commercial composters. In fact, on the front range, there is one. And they're located in Keensburg, which is a 52 mile one-way drive from Boulder, where the eco cycle trucks originate. And the eco cycle spends a lot of time convincing municipalities in the front range to do commercial composting. But it's all going to that same composter. And that composter is eventually going to tell us, you know, we don't have anywhere else to sell this stuff. And it's not as easy to compost. Food waste is not, post-consumer food waste is not so easy to compost. It's a lot of contamination in it. So, the existing market, you would think that composting generally goes to agriculture. But in Colorado and much of the west, the market, really the only significant market is landscaping. Of course, there's organic farmers who really have no choice. The compost is going to be their primary source of nutrients. So, organic farmers use it. But looking at the whole state, organic farmers are pretty insignificant in terms of total acreage compared to the rest of agriculture. So, the way I look at this is, you know, we're not getting anywhere with trying to ban organics from the landfill and Colorado. It's kind of a non-starter because of those economics. So, what about looking at the end markets? What about trying to increase demand? What about trying to get it into agriculture? So, as you, I'm sure, have heard, topsoil loss is a major problem worldwide. And Colorado is not immune from that. And that is because we have this sort of race to the bottom agriculture going on that only values, you know, how cheaply can you produce a crop? It does not pay a farmer to build soil or to take care of their soil. So, what can we do about that? And how do we get compost more used in agriculture? So, one thing we could do is try to quantify the benefits, the associated benefits, like you've probably heard that if you are composting, you're also saving water. Your soil is better able to hold water. And you obviously need less fertilizer. You are less susceptible to, your crops are less susceptible to disease. It's really tough to quantify all those things, but those are efforts that are underway. It happens to be very difficult to identify those locations specific, you know, those benefits in Colorado or even the front range are going to be different from the benefits elsewhere. So, that's a major challenge. How about looking at another single benefit, carbon sequestration, which I'm going to talk about here. So, carbon sequestration, so this chart is like the organic cycle, nutrient cycle chart that I started with. And basically what this is showing is that compost and plants can sequester carbon long-term in soil. So, compost by itself happens to be about half pure carbon, about 50% pure carbon. So, simply by the act of applying compost, you are applying a stable form of carbon to the soil. And it stays in the soil long-term. A lot of it does. Also, you are helping to grow more plant matter, grow longer roots. Those things also, so photosynthesis, plant growing, plants dying, plants decomposing. A lot of that is some of that organic, some of that that carbon is released back into the atmosphere, but a lot of it stays in the soil long-term. To the point where if you look at it globally, if you look at if we were to build soil and apply compost and a concerted effort on broad acre farming worldwide, that may well be the best tool that we have for carbon dioxide drawdown to get us out of the climate change or at least to start to reduce the climate change that we're feeling right now. And the beauty of this is that you're really solving three problems here. You're working on drawdown, as I say, you're reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You are building soil, you're restoring that lost top soil, and you are producing more nutritious crops. Our food, our carrot, a carrot that you eat today is generally not as nutritious as a carrot that your grandparents ate. And that is because of depletion of nutrients in the soil. So when you are sequestering carbon, you're building soil and you're also making more nutritious food. So that's the why. Now I'm going to talk just, I'm going to just run over some statistics on where Longmont stands in its organic diversion. So I'm going to start with Colorado. So this is a screenshot from an article or a report that EcoCycle produced. It's available on our website. This is the 2019 version. The 2020 version is coming out very soon. But it shows you that in terms of pounds recycled per person per day, this includes organics, we're not doing so well in Colorado. And here's a little more specifics on that. So between recycling and composting, we're only diverting 17.4%. The rest of it is going to a landfill. And that is way on the low end of the states. If you look at cities, you see a different story, especially locally. There are a lot of cities that are doing way better than that. Longmont and Longmont is right in there. So these are the 10 best cities in the front range. And Longmont is, what is that, number five. And then you can see by comparison some of the standout cities that are outside the front range. And keep in mind that once you venture outside the front range, the recycling and composting infrastructure is vastly reduced. And that's why our rate is so low. A lot of the state is very rural. So here is Longmont by itself. So this is the, this is the subscription rate of various containers. So what I want to point out here is, so this red line on top, that is the big 96 gallon trash can. So these are the number of subscriptions over time. And you see that the people are swapping out slowly. They're big trash cans. And they are instead getting more of the smaller 48 gallon trash cans. And you see that they are also slowly but steadily moving to every other week trash as they add the opt-in composting program. So these two, these two go hand in hand, the green and the yellow, that people are, people are finding that as they, if they have a compost bin, they, they're finding, you know, I guess I don't really need weekly trash collection. So, you know, this is, so Longmont has an opt-in program where you have to subscribe to, you have to go to Longmont website. It's all come up, which I'll put up in a minute. You have to make the choice to compost. It is not automatic. So it's that, that means that you have kind of slow growth. It takes a long time to get there. But, but this is, this is impressive. So overall, so the opt-in, so the opt-in rate is 21, there is 20%. That's, that's pretty good. It's, I think the program is what five years old now. It's, that's pretty good for opt-in. So now I'm going to talk about what, what we can do to improve that, what, what you can do to, to improve Longmont's rate to, and just to advocate for, and, and make composting more available. So one thing, if, so if you are, if you have a single family home, number one, what you can do if you don't already is subscribe to Longmont's opt-in program. I'm guessing that a lot of our listeners probably already do that. Another thing that's super important is to advocate for universal zero waste ordinance, such as, Boulder has in, in Boulder, as you probably know, you are required to subscribe to a compost service and you're required to, to have compost bins. So, and that, that, that's true for residents. That's true for businesses and that's true for institutions. They all must compost in, in Boulder. And I'll have a slide showing the, the impact of that in a moment. So, so that's something that I know some folks in Longmont are working on. Or at, at the very least, you know, can we do an opt out composting program instead of opt in that will raise the rate. Multifamily and commercial sites. What the really, you'll see a slide in a moment that, that shows the. Just how important universal zero waste is for, for those sectors. Support the Boulder County compost facility. If you haven't heard, there is a compost facility that is being planned right now. It's going through the land use process right now. There's a great site. And they have a great plan. And it's, and it's something that's very worthy of support. And then, and then compost at home. If you don't. So I'm going to run through these in a little bit more detail quickly. So, so here is a screenshot from the city of Longmont opt in program. So if you haven't already, this is where you go. To, to participate in that program. And of course these links will be available at the end of the presentation. Okay. Here is the slide for the impact of universal zero waste. So this is, this is city of Boulder organics collection. So what you're looking at here is. So city of Boulder started residential curbside collection in 2005. That's the white line. You see this dip. This first dip is at first they did a one year pilot. And then they stopped the pilot while they, you know, did some planning from what they learned from the pilot. And then they, then they opened it back up and, and, and, and had city wide residential subscription. But the, the blue line is the commercial. Diversion rate. And this is almost entirely. Non-post consumer. It's like it's, it's pre-consumer post industrial organic waste that. So if you're a major generator of organic waste, it might be worth it to you to, to send it to a compost facility. But if you're, you know, if you, if you deal with, with post-consumer waste, it might be worth it to you to, to send it to a compost facility. But if you, you know, if you, if you deal with post-consumer waste, it might be worth it to you to send it to a compost facility. But if you're, you know, if you, if you deal with, with post-consumer, maybe not so much, but, but the jump from 2014 to 2015, that's, that's because of the universal zero waste ordinance. So, you know, the, the, that made a huge difference in getting businesses on board. As you can see, you know, multifamily, multifamily. We're, we're making progress, increasing the rate for multifamily, but that involves, you know, sort of a mix. It's, it's a combination of that commercial entity, but a lot of folks need to be educated. So, so it's tough. The, so the Boulder County Compost facility. So there is a, there's a great site. It's on 287, just north of highway 52. Used to be a, a nursery. And that's where the site happens to be. Now it's, now it's a bunch of mature trees around surrounded by agriculture. And now that site was chosen because it's number one isolated. And number two, it's surrounded by agriculture and Boulder County has a plan to actually, they're not, they don't want to just compost. They want to create compost and create an incentive, as I mentioned earlier, for farmers. To use it. So what they're, I helped create a pro forma that shows that if they were to sell compost to farmers who make a commitment to, to be carbon farmers sell that compost to them at a, at a rate that's comparable to the, to their cost to spread fertilizer currently. So it just, it's a tweak on the, on the financials for that. For that. Facility. And the facility is, it's, it's going, these, these pictures are, it's, it's, this is a type of composting that, that minimizes odor. That's your big problem with compost facilities. So this is a, this, this pic, this top picture is showing that the aerated floor. So you can actually either push or air, push or pull air through all these holes in the floor. And you, and you compost inside these bunkers. So it's really, it's a little bit like what you do at home. It's not a long wind rows. Like you may have seen it at other compost facilities. This is a highly controlled. Compost facility that I think is, is, is suitable for. You know, the semi-urban situation that we have in Eastern Boulder County. So really excited that is, that is slated open in 2022. And I, because they are going through the public process right now. I highly encourage you to, to advocate for it. Tell your commissioners that you want it. Okay. Then. Backyard composting. I'm just going to mention that. I'm not going to talk about composting at home. Because Stephanie is going to talk about it. About composting at home. Ecosycle has a lot of resources about composting at home on their, on their, on our website. So I'm just putting this link here for folks. There's, there's all kinds of information about. About composting at home. And lastly, I'm going to, I'm going to end the presentation with a. Just take a couple of minutes to talk about this program that we're doing. So I mentioned carbon farming that we're, that we're encouraging, we're finding, we're trying to find a new value for, for, for our local farmers to use compost and build soil. And part of this is, is that we need the general public to, you know, to, to understand the opportunity here. And to, to help push the conversation towards, towards building soil, towards, towards, towards valuing carbon farming, towards carbon farming, meaning farming to build soil. So, so what we're doing to, to educate and advocate is we are doing a citizen science project and we are, we're, we, we, we have a first phase of it that we're in year two right now of, of a three year study. We're actually doing science in people's yards, seeing if we can measure the amount of carbon being sequestered in their soil when they apply compost and a few other treatments. And, and that's a limited scope trial that we are now about to launch a second phase that is, it's going to be a more open form of, it's going to be essentially the same, but it's, it's going to be a little more DIY kind of approach where you can attend trainings, but you are, and we, we, we teach you how to take soil samples. We teach you how to use a, a phone app to our USDA phone app that helps you record data that, that, that will be part of the, the database that we are, that we're using. And it's, it's geared to being a family project. So it's, so it's a fun thing that you can do with your family while everybody's staying at home. So if you, there will be more information about this coming soon. We don't have a webpage yet. I think in a week or two that will be live. Meanwhile, if you're interested in participating in our carbon farming program, all you need is a little patch of yard, a little patch of grass and a, a cell phone and, and, and an interest to learn. And you can email rosy the eco cycle.org and, and, and be on the list to, to hear more about that. So that is the end of my presentation. Awesome. Thank you so much, Dan. Really fascinating. I'm excited to hear more about that carbon farming on, on the lawn and seeing how, how much of a difference that makes, especially with water conservation. So if people have questions for Dan, please type them in the Q and A and we'll get to them at the end. Thank you so much. And welcome Stephanie Potter. We're excited to hear about green star schools and what's happening at Eagle Crest Elementary here in Longmont. Great. Thank you. I'm just going to share my screen here. I learned so much from those two first presentations. I want to take that stuff to school. It's really exciting to hear about. Very cool. I think that is working. All right. Great. Well, I'm from Eagle Crest and we're a leadership school. And I'm going to talk about two sustainable programs, sustainability programs that we have at our school, green star program and a food rescue program. We've been a green star school since 2009. And we're so appreciative of being able to participate in that. The first year when we started, we learned about what we could compost and what we could recycle. And since then our programs really grown and we've been inspired to implement many sustainable projects. And being green has become a proud part of our school culture and our identity. And students who've been with us since kindergarten think this is just how all schools are. They don't realize that ours is really unique. And so, we'd like to spread it so that all schools have this too. All of our green initiatives are students, staff and community driven. And our entire school participates in it. Katie Schwartz is my partner with this. And she and I have a group of about 30 kids. They're fourth and fifth graders and they meet before school. And they're called the eco eagles. And they sponsor our program and lead it. And we're also sponsored by our school district. There's two programs that help us out, which is the resource wise program. And also the STEM explorers program. Oh, the slide's not forwarding. Oh, there it is. Good. Okay. Our green star school program is sponsored by eco cycle, of course. And our school looks a little different because we have compost and recycle bins in the cafeteria and in all of the classrooms. We have reusable trays and utensils. In the cafeteria. And we reduce our waste in our restrooms by composting our paper towels. And then eco cycle does lots of classes with all of our classrooms and assemblies and that sort of thing. So the green star school objectives are to reduce waste. To increase recycling. To implement the collection of compostables. To improve environmental awareness and motivate participation. And also to lower each school's trash bill. And there are many ways that we develop sustainable habits. And that's what we do. And that's what we do. Eco cycle, of course, provides us with experiences and classes. And they help us celebrate our successes. We let our community know how much trash we've reduced. If we're sorting correctly. We just celebrated 10 years of being a green star school. We do our best to make composting and recycling simple and easy. We have a lot of things that we do. We have a lot of things that we do. We have posters that actually have the physical objects on them. So they know where to put things. And then we have color coding of our bins. So blue, for example, in the classroom, you have a blue bin for recycling. It's also in the pod. And it's also in the cafeteria. And then we provide guidelines for our teachers and students. So we have a lot of things that we do in our cafeteria. And we also have a lot of things that we do. And we have a lot of things that we do in our cafeteria. We have a program called green star ambassadors. And anybody can participate in this. They don't need to be in the eco egos group. These kids monitor the trash, recycle and compost. And they help out with the food rescue table, which I'm going to talk about in a little bit. So it's a great thing to be a part of the program. And it's also a great thing to be able to help the younger kids. And this has been really great because it connects our kids more with, with our community and it really promotes buy-in. And I thought I would just show if we have this informational videos that we share with our students and staff. And I thought I would play part of one. We'll see if this works. I will skip that but it basically just shows how what we do in the cafeteria and this will be in the links at the end so you can you can watch it then hopefully this will keep going all right good deal all right so eco cycle and GreenStar also sponsors many other activities at our school such as zero waste events they teach us how to do that and our PTO has been amazing and they sponsor our zero waste events this is a lapse for leadership event where we had fresh fruit and we all brought our water bottles it was great they also sponsor a waste free lunch contest for one week we try to reduce our trash as much as possible and not use our lose our utensils from the cafeteria which is a problem but we try not to do that and bring bring zero waste lunches they also provide mini grants for schools so in the past we've used these many grants to purchase materials to build green kits for all the classrooms so now all the classrooms have these and they're just reusable so that when we have parties or snacks we're not producing any waste and eco cycle has also taught us about vermicomposting or warm composting and some of our classrooms have these bins when we first started when we first started out as a GreenStar school we we got training in this so these are really fun for the kids they're a great hands-on demonstration of decomposition and food chain and waste reduction and we also study the word life cycle and the kids care for the worms in here and they feed them our vegetable and fruit peels dry leaves I bring in coffee grounds and they make sure our compost stays in balance is Dan mentioned it can get smelly if it's out of balance so they have to make sure it stays in balance and then we use the worm castings for our schoolyard gardens which is which has been really fun so many kids like to they learn about these in class and then they say well I want to build one at home so I'm just gonna share with you how to make one of these at home it's very simple you just need a bin we just use a 10 gallon storage bin and then you drill holes in the top and on the sides about two to three inches apart and then you prepare bedding which is just newsprint not colored newsprint just the black white the colored can have toxins in it and we don't want to hurt the worms so you rip this up into shreds you wet it so it's damp like a sponge but not soaking wet and then you add some soil two to three cups of soil and then you can add the worms and then you can start feeding them and it's just really great to watch everything decompose and then to use it in our garden so that is how you do that at home and there'll be links at the end if you are interested in doing this other activities we've done at school because we're a green star school we've done energy-saving contests and those have been supported by the resource-wise program at our school we've done water audits both inside and outside supported supported by STEM explorers we have done paper waste reduction projects we have plants in all of our classrooms to help with clean air we do energy audits we have gardens at our school and right now we're working on butterfly gardens we have milkweed growing there we planted those milkweed in our compost first and then planted the seeds here so that was a really fun project many classrooms and students have taken on projects themselves we have a class that did a plastic straw use reduction project we have kids who did a marker drive we had a teacher who asked if we could use get reusable k cups for the staff which we did and then those who don't use them we recycle the ones that are not reusable we had some students come up with the idea of earth friendly cleaners so now all the teachers have those and we refill them and then we have our food rescue table which i'm going to talk about next all right so because we were a green star school we were invited to participate in an epa food waste reduction event with eco cycle and the kids learned about a food rescue table there and they were super excited and when we got back to school we asked our principal if we could start one and he said yes and then as it turned out a district art shelly allen who's our director of nutrition services was at the event too and she was thinking about doing this for the entire school district so we became the pilot school it worked great it's just it went really well and now our school district has standard operating procedures for becoming a food for having a food rescue program at schools and we've got 13 schools participating so far so we want to keep spreading the word so that more schools participate so a food rescue table is simply a table this is what ours looks like we have a cooler not the the tray with ice and we have a real cooler but the kids can put their unopened food in the bins so prepackaged food can go in there and whole fruits can go in there and also milk and cheese and yogurt can go in the cooler and then the food is available during lunch time for kids to eat or it is also put out during the day for snacks for kids who don't don't have a snack at school and then the cafeteria also reuses the food and those are the items that some examples of items that go in it so we do a lot of education around why we would want to rescue food and this has already been discussed but these are some of the kid resources that we use and the topics that we talk about and we talk about solutions so we do that before we start our food rescue table and then everybody's a food rescue hero so there's a bulletin board in the line where the kids stand to get their food so that they can choose they can think about what they want to take for to eat and that that bulletin board is changed every day by students it's a job and they put up the meals every day and so by the time the kids get to the counter they can think before they take the food do i really want that do i really need that we encourage them to to take any extra food to save to eat it later that's especially easy if they have brought their lunches like a box lunch from home and we also encourage them of course to put any of their unopened food or whole fruit into the bins we have expectations in the cafeteria of just we teach the kids of course to be respectful and polite and appreciative of their food to clean up after themselves to think before they throw anything into the trash can this food be rescued if not if it can be where does it go we encourage them to use the food rescue table during lunch if they're still hungry and we also have we sent information home to parents about this to talk about ways to reduce food waste at home and we encourage the parents to pack to pack the food the kids will eat or kids can make their own lunches which is even better we collect data on how much food we're rescuing so this is another student job every day at the end of lunches a student will go and count all the food that is left and the actual numbers are greater than this because of course the food is being consumed during lunchtime but this is what's left at the end of our our day and the cafeteria can use this data also to see what kids are eating and what they're not eating and then they can order accordingly to what our kids are enjoying and these are just some of our numbers as you can see our totals we've we've rescued over 9,000 items and we've saved three thousand three hundred fifty dollars so far so that is pretty significant and when the kids see these numbers they get really excited they get really excited too when they see a when they count the number of clementines or whatever they're counting and if there's a lot one day and then they're gone the next it's just it's really interesting and exciting for the kids to see some other food rescue resources that we have and that we were inspired by the one on the left is a K through 12 food rescue database it's a national database that you can participate in and our numbers aren't quite correct but it calculates co2 reduction and how many meals you've saved and then live well colorado and smarter lunchrooms the smarter lunchrooms movement and chef and foundation both they all three of those have great information about healthy school meals and how to decrease food waste in the cafeteria and we used all three of those resources when we were figuring out how to do the food rescue table so i just want to talk a little bit about things that have been successful in maintaining both our green star program and our food rescue program so i think the biggest thing is just to start small and make things as easy as possible for people to participate in that's one thing and another thing is include everyone all of our projects you've seen have been ideas from either students, staff or community and that really gets a lot of buy-in and that lets us work together and that's been really successful too that we listen to to our community and our students we give our kids voice we have a couple of blogs that we maintain and the kids write most of the blog posts and that way they can write about what's important to them they can show off their projects they can talk about the community outreach we do so that's a fun thing to do and then we partner with everybody we can partner with we're so appreciative of EcoCycle for sponsoring this program our custodial staff is huge in being being able to implement both programs because they really know the ins and outs of the school and they can help make the program successful our kitchen staff and the district nutrition services departments are really important because they've provided reusable items for our cafeteria they encourage kids to take only what they will eat our administration helps with logistics and staff and student buy-on and they support assemblies and classes and our PTO has been amazing they've given us lots of financial support and help with zero waste events and then our school district the administrators in the school district have been great and STEM explorers and resource-wise programs have given us curriculum and energy saving tools and physical items such as recycle bins so we just really appreciate all of these partners that we have and then i'd like to end with some ideas for calls to action the first would be to start at home if you have kids get them involved and model sustainable habits for them and then once they're interested in keeping our earth healthy have them go to the schools or the district and email or write letters or talk to them and i have an example up here of a letter from a former EcoCrest student who now lives in Wisconsin and this letter is asking his new school district to implement a green star program in Wisconsin so i think that's really powerful for kids to do community members and parents can contact their school or in the school districts and also get in touch with EcoCycle to become a green star school there's a waitlist and a process but the email is right there and that will be linked in the notes also and so that is it for me thanks for listening um and allow me to participate in this that was great Stephanie so inspiring um so put any questions for Stephanie in the Q&A um one note about green star schools is srl is working on bringing more green star schools to Longmont so if you're interested in that then please be a part of this project so great everybody thank you Naomi Dan Stephanie thank you so much for sharing your expertise and for all of the great work that you're doing in our community um so we've got some links going up for Stephanie and um yeah so as we're waiting for audience questions we have some for you as well um so we wanted to ask each one of you what the impact has been so far um of COVID-19 on the work you're doing specifically um any opportunities that have come to mind or um you know using this time to pivot transform your work um to maybe reach more people or yeah so um Naomi do you want to start sure i can take this first um i mentioned very briefly in my presentation about some of the changes we've made uh due to the coronavirus um we had to really rework uh a lot of our distribution models figure out how to safely provide food but at the same time having um a lot of people out of work and uh there there was a higher need for food and there still is we're seeing it continue on and probably for a while now there's a higher need for food access and so it was very important that we could continue our work but also protect our volunteers and protect the people we're giving food to and working with so um a lot of that is you know making sure everyone has PPE everyone has the masks and the gloves and sanitizer and um no contact drop-off and pick up as much as possible practicing social distancing not being able to do the park hangouts but doing it in the parking lot and being able to space out the cars or the bikes whoever's coming in to pick up food um so it's been a little bit of restructuring but there's just a huge amount of opportunity right now so one of the things that we've done to expand is that in um previous years our produce in the parks were just once a month and we've been offering produce in the parking lot twice a month now um and it seems still very popular and so we're going to continue that through the summer and we've also identified some new recipient sites and some new partnerships that are are looking to provide more food over the summer um especially with you know schools being out of session there are some school foods being provided this month but there is again going to be some gaps in service until school starts up again and a lot of students a lot of children get their meals through their school system and so there are some there's some programs that we're working with to help provide that um and there's really been a lot of great funding opportunities and emergency funding opportunities to help with food support right now because there's relief grants Hunger Free Colorado there's just um at the beginning of all this in March and early April there was a huge coming together of people saying we're going to need to address this and so we're still looking at the long term you know what's this going to look like in a few months is um are we going to have to be finding new funding sources new food sources um how is it disrupting the food supply chain initially there was like a lot of food and then there's you know the can it can change how the distributors are working with food during this crisis so uh it's it's been exciting and there's a huge amount of opportunity I think awesome Stephanie yeah how different since you're not in school right now I know um I I think the opportunity has just been to bring it home because we weren't able to do it at school and so um a lot of our kids um I hear from a lot of parents um that they the kids um come home and they're they say you know why aren't you recycling that or this needs to go in the compost or whatever so I think just bringing it home and we had opportunities to talk about it when we were doing online school so I think that's kind of been where that where that has been and I think for the coming school year too um I think our big push is going to be more about don't take what you can't eat and pack really what only what you can eat or what you like um because I'm not sure we'll be able to how much of the food rescue we'll be able to do with COVID that will really emphasize the other part I think great thanks yeah I would think that um since kids are home all day that there would be an even greater opportunity to spread the word and make sure that's good stuff's happening at home um Dan any thoughts on how the programs are being impacted by COVID well yeah we were very impacted um we had to I'm also responsible for our for our charm facility at the center for under second materials and we had that shut down for roughly a month essentially the month of April and that was tough we had to you know furlough some some folks including some drivers because the drivers were impacted by that as well um but uh you know we got through it and we got a uh a small business loan so um extremely grateful for that that was it was a lifesaver um and uh yeah I think there's there's lots of silver linings I'm not going to include um zoom meetings as one of them because they have their downsides have been kicked off as three times so I apologize for that but um but uh hey I'm home I guess that's okay um so um but I think um you know we've certainly had the opportunity uh while we were closed for a month to uh to make some some small improvements um and to you know just kind of reconsider a lot of things that we do at charm as far as compost is concerned um you know I um I think the silver lining remains to be seen I I was we were very close to getting some legislation passed that would have really um helped uh get this um what I'm you know make this connection between composting and climate change in agriculture um and unfortunately uh COVID um uh caused us to you know a lot of the bills that that were um that were in process got dropped um so we'll have to bring that up next year but uh maybe it's you know I think just the silver lining there is it's it's uh it's an opportunity to to reach out especially in the agricultural realm and uh and get more uh get uh you know get more enthusiasm for that you know across sectors so um you know I think we're still adjusting and um it's um it's yeah it's a it's a mixed bag but we're um but you know grateful to be to be back awesome um we had a question um for Stephanie and also Naomi if you want to chime in on this or Dan all of you actually um what would it take to make all of Longmont's elementary schools green star schools so um Stephanie do you want to start when that would be so awesome that is that's great um I think um you know educating the kids and then the kids take it home to their parents and talk to their parents about it so I think that's huge um I think getting feeder systems um involved so the elementary and then the middle and then the high school if there's a continuum there um the kids who have been at the elementary school will will bring it up with them so I think that is would be powerful um and you know maybe parents and community members talking to the schools about becoming green star and then getting on that weight list I don't know how long that list is now but um getting on that list great Naomi want to add anything yeah based on our zero waste committee meetings my understanding is that one of the biggest barriers for all the Longmont schools uh becoming green star schools right now is funding I mean the weight list exists because there's limited resources on eco-cycle side to implement these programs they you know take time resources and it's also you know continual ongoing expense to to maintain it there's the initial expense of of producing uh you know the program in the school and getting all of these resources in and then maintaining it so the biggest thing is to come together collectively um parents teachers administrators talking to the school board interested community members to come together and say we want this in our school system we um you know we're relatively well to do school district we could do this we just need to have kind of the energy the will to come together and and ask this uh this of the city council of the of the school boards um say this is something we want to do as a community excellent um there will be a link that we'll put up a little bit later if people are interested in getting involved in helping us advocate for more green star schools so the more voices we can bring to the district and school board the better um dan i don't know if you had anything to share i know there's a whole program at eco-cycle that involves green star schools but do you have any comment well yeah that's exactly right it comes down to funding it comes down to advocacy advocating at the superintendent and school board level that um that it's a priority um and yeah that's that is that is the barrier um okay well we have time for a few more questions so if people have any questions feel free to put them in the q and a um dan maybe we'll stick with you for a moment um so you shared that colorado um is doing pretty poorly as far as recycling rates um what would you say are ways to change that and um also around composting you talked about universal composting any thoughts on how we can make that happen in long run uh well um color looking at the the state first i think um colorado is as i say challenged by um super low landfill rates um and a lot of a lot of uh rural area um so it is hard to it does have a major impact to to bring recycling and composting to to rural parts of the state um so i mentioned a bill that that was dropped in the legislature we actually also got a bill passed that is that is focused on end markets building uh end markets to create closed loops for materials in colorado we happen to have a great closed loop for glass in colorado you can go glass bottle to glass bottle in colorado and never leave the state which is really cool thing there's there's capacity for you know the entire state's generation of glass there at that facility we need more of that we need we need more secondary processing so that we do the the primary sort of the eco cycle then we need to we need local places to turn that into new products so so this bill works towards that it's it's it's essentially a create a research entity to to look specifically at how do we how do we stimulate end markets in colorado in terms of long run universal zero ways you know i think there there is definitely some support there um and i think um you know talking to city council um i know i know there's some um there's definitely interest on the staff level um so i don't think there'd be a lot of pushback there i think it's it's again it's mostly um you know go to the the highest level go to the um go to city council and um and tell city council that um you know opt-in is a is a great first step and and that's the way it was looked at you know when when that was passed um you know that's you know we're getting to about the limit to what opt-in can do i think so so that's time to take the next step but i think and city council needs to hear that there is support for that all right well that's the part of what SML will be working on um we're hoping to have a well there will be at some point a meeting we're thinking it's going to be in august um man we do want to talk a little bit about that well we don't quite have the details yet because it hasn't been set but when the meeting occurs we're going to try to get a group of people together whether it's going to be a you know probably a web meeting versus an in-person city council meeting um to give public comment on on what we want and the that we are looking for universal composting and as opposed to opt-in and um also i would love to do some work around addressing the the multi-family unit issue that dan talked about a little bit because we i think we can do better in that realm as well and so we will be through our zero waste committee uh getting anyone who wants to help participate in in this process of advocating for for universal composting and also for green star schools we're going to have opportunities for how you can have your voice heard by city council and by school uh board so i think racially you have some some links and stuff we can share for that yeah so great thanks everybody for your thoughtful answers so we put together some next next steps for action um so starting conversations with your family your neighbors your communities your churches at work restaurants you go to about food waste and food rescue volunteer with long month food rescue or any local food rescue organization um sign up for long months curbside composting program if you're not already signed up for that reduce your bin size and the amount of money you spend on getting rid of your trash support a long month universal zero waste ordinance so that will be something that srl will really be working on um compost at home in your backyard get a worm bin have fun creepy crawlies advocate for more long month green star schools definitely that makes such a huge impact and as you know those elementary school kids learn um those tools that they'll take with them for the rest of their lives talk email write letters to teachers and school administrators yeah there are definitely schools that are interested and so i think and and eco cycle is aware of those schools so we can srl and this whole community can help support that process and join srl zero waste committee um so we'll have that information about where to sign up for that um and we have one more question our data on diversion rate available publicly for single entities like cu dan do you know anything about that private companies or organizations and and what they're doing about diversion rates i well cu i'm sure tracks their their diversion rate they do they have their own um recycling facility there and and certainly they do um uh they do uh track their data um it's not gathered um uh formally because they are you know cu happens to be part of the state so i think you you probably can get that information from them if you're a private entity you know it's up to you whether you want to share that information but uh yeah if if you contact cu recycling i'm sure they would share that information specifically for cu okay um so just a couple more things wrapping up thanks everybody again for um being here and we wanted to um uh just give you some links for how to get involved with the zero waste committee so the link i just put up um there's a little form there that you can fill out and let us know if you're interested in green star schools or in universal composting attending our meetings so um check that out we will have this webinar up on our website as well that same website as well as we have a youtube channel um and we'd love people to sign up for our newsletter um where we'll keep you up to date with all of the great work the srl is doing so you can sign up for that there and then finally um we are a nonprofit and rely completely on donations and grants and um so anything that you can donate today is great we do have um a membership amount of $25 a year but any amount helps so here is a link um to donate through paypal and um yeah we're a community run organization totally focused on local long month issues so we'd love your support and uh help making a difference in bringing long month to be a zero waste city reduce emissions um and avoid the worst effects of climate change and go green so thanks everybody for being here um I do have this last slide to bring up um any other final thoughts before we close here we go thank you there's our links to donate as well so Stephanie, Naomi, Dan so great to have you here and hope to see you soon I'll keep up the good work thank you Rachel I just wanted to mention someone who asked about having access to the slides I was presenting and um I believe we can add those to our zero waste page as well where the webinar will be hosted so if you want to revisit either the webinar or the slides we will uh we'll post those on that same link the zero waste page of the SRL long month srollongmonth.org perfect all right take care everybody stay safe thank you thank you thank you so much bye