As international leaders remain engaged in UN climate talks, five Montgomery County students from two high schools are putting their heads together to talk trash. “There needs to be change, so, we decided to step up,” said Ethan Weiss, 17, a senior at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Weiss is disturbed by a warming planet and sees composting as a way to address climate change locally.
Jack Clauss, 18, also a BCC senior, co-founded BCC Capital Compost with Weiss, but also wanted to do more. “There’s so much waste being thrown into landfills, and it’s contributing so much to our carbon footprint,” said Clauss. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finds landfills among the largest sources of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the U.S. wastes about a third of its food supply. The nation’s schools alone spend $9.7 million dollars a day to manage food waste, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Those figures could be dramatically reduced through recycling, composting and food recovery. This summer, students from BCC and Richard Montgomery High School formed the Coalition to Re-imagine School Waste.