Hi all! First post here. I've had a garden for 14 years, been composting my whole life, and recently discovered that I'm a permaculturist, more or less. I've even started a food forest in my suburban backyard this spring! The more I learn about permaculture, the more it makes sense.
I am a maintenance worker for a small private school in Pennsylvania with about 240 total students. The school recently implemented an "environmental sustainability initiative" which includes hiring a chef to cook local, organic, etc. meals from scratch and they are putting in a vegetable garden and want to reduce energy usage. They have asked me for my input on making the school more environmentally sustainable. Any ideas here are welcome and could potentially be passed on as mainstream to the next generation!
But specifically I need info on composting kitchen/cafeteria scraps including paper and meat and large amounts of grass clippings from 3 (chemically treated) athletic fields. We have a small front end loader and an open area near some woods for possibly some compost windrows. I forsee topdressing the athletic fields with sifted compost instead of chemical fertilizers as a possible use for the finished product. More vegetable gardens and maybe a food forest could be possible as well. There are some at this school who would love to go full on green but those in power seem to be just warming up to the idea of sustainability and, I suspect, simply like the potential marketability of it. Either way it's a great opportunity and I'd love to hear some ideas! Thanks!
