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Letter to the Editor: We should put composting centers closer to homes, parks

Marin Little and Anna Stafford
Summit Middle School students

Our names are Marin and Anna, and we are seventh graders at Summit Middle School. We are doing a community service project, and we would like to help educate our community about recycling and composting.

According to the High Country Conservation Center, Summit County residents recycle 20% of the time, and we compost 15%. Colorado remains in the top 20 most wasteful states which are below average. Not composting causes greenhouse gases to be produced in a landfill. This makes matters worse for climate change and is making our winters warmer. 

To help solve this problem, Summit Middle School has recently installed composting bins in the cafeteria. This lowers our amount of waste and how much methane we put into the atmosphere. Summit Middle School is also helping by putting all of their recycling leftovers in the STEM lab for kids to use for their school projects. People can use their compost for soil and fertilizer to enrich crops and plants which can help reduce waste from bagged soil.



Although our schools are trying to compost and recycle, many residents have yet to compost their food waste. This stems from the problem that composting is not accessible to the average person. Many people try to compost, but it is inconvenient. It starts to rot in the homes, and when you want to drop it off at the composting center, you have to go all the way across town. We have made a solution to help make composting accessible to the community. If we could put composting and recycling centers closer to people’s homes or parks, then we could encourage more people to start composting and recycling.

Thank you for listening to us!


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