GPS Composting

Assist schools in instituting programs to properly separate organic materials for commercial composting

Greenfield High School cafeteria, December 2025

High School restarts!

On December 9, 2025, Greenfield High School restarted its compost program after a long break. Starting in 2016, students at all of Greenfield’s schools, plus kitchen staff, were separating their food and paper waste in the cafeterias for composting at Martin’s Farm. The program was in all Greenfield schools for four years. The MassDEP, who provided the initial grant to get it started, even featured our schools on their video about how to compost in schools. But then in 2020, the Covid-19 shutdown halted the program, and it has not been operational since 2020.

What goes where

Now, with the assistance of Amy Donovan, Program Director at Franklin County Solid Waste Management District, Greenfield schools are starting up again!

During the first week of the relaunch, Donovan made announcements to each lunch period, then stood by the sorting station to train students in sorting their lunch waste. Trash is discarded, then liquid waste is drained into a 5 gallon pail, then food and paper waste, such as paper napkins, are dumped from trays into yellow compost barrels lined with bags that are certified as compostable by BPI. From there, the custodial staff takes full bags outside to a compost-only dumpster, which is then emptied once a week by Casella Waste, who hauls the food scraps to Martin’s Farm in Greenfield for commercial composting.

Organics go in yellow barrel

Although only the High School has started so far, with the School Committee designating it as a “pilot”, other schools are expected to follow suit in the coming months.

Results from the first day showed that, similar to pre-pandemic figures, GHS is able to compost about 75% of the lunch waste, by weight: 76 lbs. of food and paper waste was composted, while trash was reduced to only 18 lbs. On the second day of the program, the cafeteria compost weighed about 71 lbs. Donovan was pleased to find that the GHS kitchen has been separating food waste for chicken and pig farmers for quite some time. Over 2 days that week, the kitchen produced four 5-gallon pails and a big bag of lettuce for animal feed, together weighing 109 lbs.

At Martin’s Farm, the food scraps will be transformed into compost over the course of three to five months. This nutrient-rich soil additive is then sold to farmers and gardeners to replenish the soil.

Greening Greenfield has spent the post-pandemic years holding multiple meetings and encouraging many stakeholders to get this program re-started. We will continue to advocate for re-starting composting in all the other schools.