LENOX — Thanks to the work of Girl Scout Troop 64834, when Lenox middle and high school students are done with their lunch, they throw their food scraps into newly placed composting bins.
The four freshmen Girl Scouts — including Eva Lovett from Lee Middle and High School, Lily Tatro from Monument Mountain Regional High School, Serenity Kay from CTEC in West Springfield and Audrey Hochler from Lenox Memorial Middle and High School — earned a Silver Award for their efforts.
To get the Silver Award, scouts must complete a leadership project that addresses a community issue with at least 50 hours of work. Only 10 percent of those eligible get the award, co-troop leader Amanda Hanlin-Hochler said.
Kay said she was glad the scouts could work together on the project and that “even though we’re all from different schools, we could all compromise on doing one school.”
The four decided to tackle composting for their project in March 2023 because they were hearing that families wanted to start composting but weren’t sure how to get started.
For the project, the girls learned about different types of composting and created an Instagram to share their findings. They also handed out pamphlets about how to start composting at home on Great Barrington’s Main Street. The Lenox project grew out of those early efforts.
Ultimately, the scouts helped implement a composting program at Lenox schools, covering the first year of costs.
“I was really excited about getting the award and completing this, because we spent a really long time on this,” co-troop leader Theresa Tatro said. “I’m just really glad that we did it.”
To fund the project, the four girls had to sell nearly 1,500 boxes of cookies. The composting service cost $1,200 for the year; the rest went toward pamphlets and materials.
Since the girls are from different schools, they reached out to multiple districts to see who would be interested in starting a compost program, and Lenox was the first to respond.
Superintendent William Collins said implementing the program was about more than supporting a student initiative, but also the right thing to do to model sustainability and responsibility.
“It just tied into the vibe of who we are and what we want to support, and we’re really proud of the girls and this initiative,” Collins said. “There’s a little expense to it, but the value is there.”
After learning about the different types of composting, the Girl Scouts landed on commercial composting, where a service picks up your composted scraps at the end of the week and drops it off at a farm, which turns it into compost. Some composters will bring fertilized soil back to the composter, which was one of the selling points for the district.
Last spring, Hochler went into a room of administrators to pitch the project. Since it was during the school day, she had to go alone. Though she said she was nervous, she said it went well because she knew what she was talking about and why it would appeal to the district.
“We were like, ‘Hey, if you’re buying soil for science planting projects or you’re turning over the soil in the garden beds at the school, we can take our unfinished scraps and turn it in for stuff that is finished,'” Hochler said. “So that was kind of a cool selling point.”
The district agreed. The troop did most of the work to set everything up, such as hiring Berkshire Compost, according to food service director Shannon Gagliardo.
The actual implementation comes in two parts, the kitchen and the cafeteria. The kitchen staff got off to a stronger start than the students.
“That’s going extremely well,” Gagliardo said. “My staff are super on board with that.”
The hardest part has been getting through to the students what they can and can’t compost.
“This has not been an easy process,” Hanlin-Hochler said. “There have definitely been times where the girls looked at me like ‘You want us to do what?’ but I’m really incredibly proud of the girls, because part of this whole exercise is getting them to just step outside of their comfort zone, and I watched them do that in incredible ways, and it was really exciting.”
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