Buckets, chickens and worms: Schools reduce cafeteria food waste through compost, shared tables

Toronto Star · Alexa St. John And Emilie Megnien The Associated Press · 2026-11-06 14:02 UTC

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — At Lovin Elementary School in Lawrenceville, Georgia, students play with their food. Sort of.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — At Lovin Elementary School in Lawrenceville, Georgia, students play with their food. Sort of.

Some walk around the cafeteria with buckets collecting leftover lunch scraps. These apple cores, banana peels and grape stems ultimately head to Lovin’s outdoor compost bin. Others put unopened milk in a shared refrigerator for students to grab as a snack or take home. Uneaten salad scraps are dumped into the school’s chicken coop.

Lovin Elementary, 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Atlanta, is one example of the many U.S. schools composting, using share tables and tailoring food choices to cut how much cafeteria food ends up in the trash.

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